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)MI1I .ADi:i rHIA FROM STATE-HOUSE STEEPLE. 



r'''.. 




PHI LADELPH I A : 
Allen. Lane & Scott and J. W. Lauderbach. Publishers. 



A Century After : 



Picturesque Glimpses 

Philadelphia ^-^^^ Pennsylvania 



INCLIUING 

FAIRMOUXT, THE WISSAHICKON, AND (JTHER RUMAXTIC LOCALITIES, 

WIIH THE 

CITIES AND LANDSCAPES OF THE STATE. 



A PICTORIAL REPRESENTATION 

111- 

Scenery, Architecture, Life, Manners and Character. 



Edited bv Edward 



Straii.vn. pufi.y J* 2-^,,L ^■'z. 



JllustraUd wUh Engravins;! hy LaUDERBACH. from Designs by THOMAS A/OKA.V. F. O. C. DaRI.EV, J. D. IVOODWARD, 

James Hamilton, f. /?. Schell. E. B. Bensell, n: L. Shepfard. 

and other Eminent Artists. 




PHILADELPHIA: 

Pl'BMSHF.D RY ALLEN, LANE & SCOTT AND J. W. L.\UDERBACII. 
No. 233 South Fifth Stkebt. 

1875- 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by 

ALLEN, LANE & SCOTT AND J. W. LAUDERBACH, 

in tlie Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 




THE SCHUYLKILL FROM LANSDOWNE. 



PREFACE. 



THIS work explains its own plan, with the best eloquence ot pen and pencil; 
and, like the City and Region to which it is dedicated, is a self-demonstra- 
ting Panorama. 

Yet a preface is as proper to a book as marrow to a bone. The "Pith of a 
bone" being, as Rabelais observes, the condensed essence of the nourishment 
that is in it. 

It is fitting, then, to express in a few words the plan of this publication, which 
is a delineation of Philadelphia — the city fitly chosen for the nation's centenary 
festival — as it has been developed by a hundred years of the freedom proclaimed 
from its own Town Hall. 

To this development nothing contributed so much as the wealth of Pennsyl- 
vania in two minerals far more precious than gold — Iron and Coal. These riches, 
discovered long after that Independence whose declaration is the pride of Phila- 
delphia, came in like a dowry offered by Nature, expressly that the city, already 
most precious to the nation from moral considerations, should be fitly furnished 
with material wealth to maintain its dignity. It is, then, especially appropriate 
that the State which confers the real benefits of opulence should be depicted 
beside the City which created the ideal of Independence. Philadelphia, therefore, 
with the noble Commonwealth in which it reposes, the sister cities which vie with 
it in developing Pennsylvania's mineral and agricultural wealth, the beauties of 
Allegheny landscapes, the charm of interior valleys and rivers, are all eminently 
appropriate to a work of this memorial character. 

There is no other city where the varieties of wild landscape so closely sur- 
round and so boldly invade a civilization given over to material industries. 
Besides the broad Delaware, the exquisite Schuylkill, a stream far more beautiful 
than the Arno, bathes one side of the cit>', and into this Italian sheet of water 
slides the wild Wissahickon, coming down pure from its ". savage groro-es and cold 
springs" as primitive as a stream of the wilderness, yet easily accessible to the 



8 PREFACE. 

most sedentary citizen. The conditions of climate, which blend at this particular 
spot the characters of the arctic and semi-tropical regions, combining the summer 
southern fruits, birds, and insects, with the sports of northern snow and ice, add 
peculiar variety to its artistic aspects. 

That among the edifices of Philadelphia is the cradle of our national liberties, 
is perhaps honor enough for any metropolis ; but it is to be remarked that, in 
addition to Independence Hall and other historical specimens of pre-Revolutionar)- 
architecture, Philadelphia contains the noblest specimens of pure Greek style in 
the country : and a wealth of private homes, its greatest pride, the models of 
middle-class comfort to all the world. 

To illustrate this City and this State with all the resources of Art is the 
design of the present work. For that purpose the most skillful artists in the 
country have long been at work, and it is the privilege ot the publishers to as- 
sure the public that the engravings prepared for "A Century After" are unap- 
proached for artistic beauty, spirit, and accuracy by any previous jjublication. 

The metropolitan character and productive arts ot Philadelphia ; its patriotic 
position in reviving the American commercial marine destroyed in the late war, 
by the equipment of a fleet of European steamers ; its importance as a nucleus 
of railways which connect the whole country together; its world-famous colleges, 
whence have sprung Schools of Law and Medicine that lead all others on the 
continent; these, with other features which give it intellectual or physical impor- 
tance, will be portrayed or described. 

Unique as this Manufacturing Centre of a free Commonwealth is on the 
globe to-day or in all past time, the moment has come to fix its image in the 
eyes of the people. With its almost complete two centuries of existence and its 
hundred years of independence, it is now read}^ to receive the homage of its 
children who love it, in the shape of a descriptive and pictorial portrait. 



A Century After. 




VESTIBULE, IXDEI'ENDENCE HALL. 



INDEPENDENCE HALL. 



A PICTURE.SOUE bluft" covered with pine-trees, on the Delaware, was chosen 
■^ in 1682 as the site of Philadelphia. The first inhabitants lived, not uncom- 
fortably, in caves hollowed out in this bank. Rapidly advancing from east to 
west, Philadelphia is a page that has been written, like a Hebrew manuscript, 



from right to left. 



lo A C/^.VrrA')' AFTER. 

Colonies always plant cities in a regular g-eometrical form ; it is the old 
feudal and barbarian systems that ha\e left us the agglomerated streets of 
Europe and Asia — so artistic, and so inconvenient. Penn laid out his capital as 
methodically as the Romans did theirs when they used to colonize. He ruled his 
streets straight out towards the west, naming them from the trees they displaced, 
such as cedar, spruce, and sassafras; not, as Mr. Longfellow has it, to appease the 
dryads whose haunts he molested, for he had a horror of the heathen mythology, 
but because he meant his city to be a rural city, and to rustle eternally with the 
breath of trees and shrubbery. The lateral streets he intersected with others 
running nearly north and south: and in designating these his imagination seems 
to have failed : for he gave up naming the streets, and simply numbered them. 

A Court-House was completed in 1710, and sheltered the Assembly, until 
1735. This structure being outgrown, the building now known as Independence 
Hall, but originally as the State-House, was begun in 1732. The site of the new 
structure was selected on Chestnut Street, which thenceforth and until now is the 
principal thoroughfare. The location was then rather beyond the growth of the 
cit\\ and the edifice remained for some time the westernmost that the capital 
could boast. A little tavern — a suburban garden structure — was opposite on 
Chestnut Street, to which in 1701 Penn, the Founder, liked often to Avalk for 
an innocent glass of home-brewed beer: and the fine trees belonging to this 
hostelry long swept the old hall with their shadows. 

The last of the primeval elms from the inn-yard was felled in 1 8 1 8 : the 
genial Governor, Richard Penn, in' memory of his worth)- ancestor, had paid it 
and its fellows the tribute of a tear : as its long branches crashed against the 
ea.stern wing of the .State-House, the citizens looked on with thoughtful reeret, 
feeling that it made a link directly between the epoch of Independence and the 
Foundation. Often had the litde grove .shadowed W'illiam Penn, as he made the 
inn a station in his suburban walks, giving "black Alice" her punctual penny in 
return for the live coal for his pipe, 

"And quoting Horace o'er her home-brewed lieer. " 

The ancient Court-House, for which Independence Hall is the substitute, 
after standing one Inmdrcd and twenty-seven years at .Second and Market Streets, 
was pulled down in 1S37 : and its belfry and arched passage-ways, — its broad sweep 
of external stairways, . descending to the pavement in double curves from the 
balcony on whicli W'liitfield had stood to preach, — vanished as other colonial 



IXDEFEXDENCE HALL. 



II 



relics have done. The State-House, though but four or five blocks away, was 
so entirely beyond the heart of the town as to seem like a citadel without the 
walls. There were no pavements on the streets around it, and the children 
jealously watched its rise from the field where they had been wont to go whortle- 
berrying. The architect was Andrew Hamilton, and it was finished, according to 
the original plan, but without the steeple, in 1744, after twelve years of effort. 
There is no more sturdy style in the world than that of " a solid red-brick 
.^ mansion of the Georgian era," as an 

English writer relishingly remarks. 




CORRIDOR, INDEPENDENCE HALL. 



The architecture of the Augustan age of " ' 
England, w^hich got its finishing touches from 

Pope and Horace Walpole, and culminated in Blenheim, is singularly devoid of 
pretense, convenient, snug, and satisfying; while its dumpy ornaments of balus- 
trades and urns, marble trimmings, string-courses, tablets, corner-dressings, and 
lintels with wedge-shaped keystone, have an expression all their own, and the 
red of its bricks acquires with age a becoming gloom that only needs letting 
alone to be perfect. The present steeple, erected forty-six years ago in 
the taste of the original, shows the more decorative side of the Queen Anne 



12 A CENTURY AFTER. 

style in its wooden urns that hold nothing, its Ionic pilasters sketched out on the 
tower, and its wreath around the clock-face ; the halls inside are ornamented, 
like some of Hogarth's interiors, with mouldings, panelings, and grotesque faces 
above the doorways. Altogether, the Hall is a richly satisfactory specimen of 
the palace architecture at the close of Queen Anne's great reign of victories. 

Mayor Allen opened it with a grand banquet, in honor of Governor John 
Penn, in the autumn of 1735. The fine building then sat in a muddy desolation; 
in the square on either side was a long shed, for storage purposes, and for the 
bivouacs of the Indians, who used to rush to the Provincial shelter at every 
difficulty, and who loved to vary with the wonders ot the town the ennui of 
their noble and vacant lives. The building was afterwards extended with clerks' 
bureaus and legal offices so as to span the whole block ; an addition without a 
gain. Otherwise it stands, much as it stood in the Revolution, and looks 
equally sturdy and uncompromising in the leafy shadows of summer or hooded 
with snow in winter. 

When England, almost simultaneously with its acquisition of India, was to 
lose America, the building put up for such different purposes was ready to 
shelter the sublime treason of 1776. On the 4th of July of that year the 
Declaration of Independence, drafted by Jefferson, Franklin, Livingston, Sherman 
and Adams, was adopted by Congress, and ordered to be engrossed. It was pub- 
licly read on the 8th, from the platform of the observatory erected in the State-House 
yard, for watching the Transit of Venus, by the American Philosophical Society. 

The principles on which the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was founded were 
a direct preparation for the Independence declared from her metropolis. Penn's 
theories of jurisprudence were imbibed from Locke, and from Algernon Sidney, 
who, in a year or two after his Quaker friend's departure, died for them on a 
scaffold. "Obedience without liberty is slavery," was a maxim of Penn's; and his 
foundation of absolute religious and civil freedom was the highway he built up in 
the wilderness for the great advent of Liberty, which afterwards illumined his 
metropolis. Never was there arranged by fate a correspondence more apposite 
than that the City of Penn should enunciate the principles of Franklin. Penn's 
doctrines were the terror of the ver)- monarch from whom he derived his charter; 
their enforcement in practice had dethroned and slain that monarch's father; and 
in their due course they developed and blossomed into American Independence. 

In Landor's " Imaginary Conversations" there is a fine dialogue between Penn 
and Peterborough, the friend of Swift and Pope. The scene of their talk is laid 
among the forests of PennsjKania, and is founded on a passage of Spence, where 




bTATE-HOUbli. 



14 A CENTURY AFTER. 

Peterborough says he took a trip with Penn to his new colony. As Landor supplies 
the conversation between the aristocrat and the friend of freedom, it goes pretty much 
in favor of the latter. As the two discuss, from their horses' saddles, the principles 
of government, Penn sends forth, over his black mare's ears, the opinion that it is 
men of genius who are wanted in a government, fully as much as what are called 
men of business. "As if men of genius," indignantly cries Penn, "were not men 
of business in the highest sense of the word — of business in which the state and 
society are implicated for ages !" 

This golden definition was well illustrated in the revolutionary era, when the 
finest body of men at that time sitting in any of the parliaments of the world con- 
ceived and maintained the theory of our Republic. These statesmen had the 
courage to break an old order, the valor to maintain the new one, and the wisdom 
to fortify it with laws and a constitution. The first and second Congresses of our 
nation comprised the flower of the characters of that age, an assembly more perfect 
in the ideal qualities of such a body than any Roman senate. As a whole body 
they ruled higher for talents, firmness and good judgment, than any national assem- 
blage known to history. "Lord Chatham said," remarks Franklin in a letter, "he 
thought it the most honorable assembly of men that had ever been known;" and 
he doubles this valuable opinion of the great Commoner with the corresponding 
sentiments, worth more to his mind than ours, of Lord Cobham, the Duke of 
Richmond, and the Duke of Manchester. 

But the external treatment of Independence Hall, rather than what was done in 
it and the interior aspect, is the business of the present paragraphs. The men of 
the early Congresses, and all that they dared and did within the walls, will be 
more appropriately considered when we come to visit the inside of the building. 
Valuable museums of sacred relics are now kept up in the east hall, where the 
Continental Congress met, and in the corresponding chamber across the corridor. 
The overwhelming associations connected with these places will be treated of at a 
future opportunity, and the subject, now, will go no farther than the vestibule. 

In that vestibule, visible even from the street, is seen an object of the highest 
interest, — the bell which tolled triumphantly while John Nixon read the Decla- 
ration in the State-House yard. 

When the Pennsylvanians were building their State edifice, they ordered an 
English bell. It was finished to order and brought across in 1752; but the tones 
learned in Britain could not be repeated in the land prepared for Democracy. 
The bell, on its first trial in this country, was found to have lost its voice. It was 
ordered to be recast, and there was skill enough in the colony to do the task; the 



i6 



A CENTURY AFTER. 



bell now examined by visitors is, therefore, American in its workmanship, as by right 
of its national office it ought to be. Pass and Stow were the artificers who under- 
took to remodel this largest mass of bell-metal in the colonies, and the imperfection 
caused by too sturdy a stroke of the clapper on the trial passed away, with the 
British form and outline of the work. For the "greatest bell in English America," 
as the Speaker of that day called it, a new device was chosen ; this was the selection 
of the same Speaker, and the motto adopted shows the irresistible leaven of free- 
dom among the people, even a quarter of a century in advance of the Declara- 
tion. The words executed in relief around the bell are from the tenth verse of 
the twenty-fifth chapter of Leviticus: "Proclaim Liberty throughout the Land unto 
all the Inhabitants thereof" It was with this device of good Speaker Norris's 
choice that the great bronze mouth was encircled when it pealed forth the new 
liberty to the crowds in the square. The bell in being remelted had corrected its 
tones — whether this indicates that the citizens threw their spoons and jewelry into 
the melting pot is not known ; but Norris, in a letter, says it surpassed the im- 
ported one, "which was too high and brittle." 

The bell has long been reheved from active service ; a deep chiseled cut 
is seen in one side of it ; having uttered the magic sound of " Liberty," it is 
now absolved from all meaner utterance: and it sits in its stout old age like a 
dumb Invalide, uttering to the mind a clearer sound through its inscription than 
it ever uttered to the ear with its clapper. 



v^S^^ 




OLD CHURCHES. 



T 



HE oldest in the city is the Swedes' Church, on Swanson Street, below Chris- 
tian. In the Swedish villa<ye named Wicaco, — the region afterwards called 



South wark," 



1677, before the site of Phila- 
delphia was fixed, these 
Northmen built their 
log cathedral. As was 
common enough at the 
time, the building was 
a fort as well as a 
church, and the onl)- 
windows were the loop- 
holes, through which 
the old matchlocks were 
to be pointed at the 
-^ Indian marauders. 
A thrilling fight 
took place here late 
in the seventeenth 
century, the defence 
being conducted en- 
tirely by Amazons, 
with that readiness 
of resource which 
always characterizes 
female warfare. A 
grand-daughter of 
the Swedish burgh- 
er, Sven Schute, a 
woman born in 
1 692, participated in 

the fray, and related it afterwards in London, where she died at a great age. 
A friendly squaw, — a medicine-woman, — coming with herbs to the house of the 
Svens, gave notice of an intended attack from her tribe. The Scandinavian 
ladies were engaged in soap-boiling at the moment, and nothing seemed more 




W --^ 



SWEDES CHURCH. 



i8 A CENTURY AFTER. 

natural than to convert the kettle of fat into ammunition for defence : they 
accordingly lifted the boiling vessel into the church, not forgetting the fire-wood 
required to keep it hot, and then with their conch-shells sounded the alarm. 
All the women of Wicaco gathered in the church, and as the warriors began 
to undermine the foundations they received on their bare, red backs a spirited 
fire of the terrible material, which in due time sent them off howling and 
parboiled. May not Defoe have heard of this incident, and used it in a well- 
known episode of Robinson Crusoe ? 

At length the Swedes determined to build a temple worthy of themselves 
and of New Sweden. Their compatriots of the State of Delaware having erected, 
in 1698, a fine church in the village of Christinaham, just outside of Wilmington, 
the Swedes of Wicaco dedicated this edifice in 1700. They subscribed both in 
money and work, and hung a great bell — said to have had silver in its metal — within 
the belfr}^ The glebe belonging to the church contained twenty-seven acres. 
An inlet from the river led up to the building, and its shores were lined on 
Sabbath-days with the canoes of the congregation, moored in the shade of the 
great sycamores. The Archbishops of Sweden sent a series of commissaries, 
authorized to serve as pastors. They were allowed a house and farm, with the 
salary of a hundred rix-dollars. When the present church was being built, and 
all the congregation were contributing the labor of their hands, the priest was 
seen among them, humbly carrying the hod. 

The stout old sanctuary, built so as to look without interruption or obstacle 
on the Delaware, is long since imprisoned in a mass of common-place build- 
ings. It faces towards Otsego Street, from which it is reached through its own 
cemetery. The beautiful orchard and tuft of sycamore-trees have disappeared ; 
and the clashing and hammering from the neighboring Navy- Yard have taken the 
place of the songs of garden-birds, whose abundance so struck the fancy of Wilson, 
the ornithologist, that he selected this sequestered cemetery for his last rest. 

Christ Church was begun in 1727, (just before Independence Hall), and 
finished with its graceful steeple in 1754. It must be remembered that at this 
date the State Church of England was the preponderating religion of the colony, 
and that AngHcanism had some authority for demanding an adequate shrine. 
The efforts of the " hot church party" had been for a long while in bitter conflict 
with those of the Friends, and in due time had prevailed. 

The steeple — one of the most tasteful designs of its day — was built with the 
profit of two lotteries, and cost two thousand pounds. On the mitre was en- 
graved the venerable name of the first Bishop, William White. The chime of 



OLD CHURCHES. 



19 




CHRIST CHURCH. 



eight bells, cast in England, by Lester & Pack, cost nine hundred pounds, and 
was long unique in the country. Summoned by these bells, the whole collection 
of Revolutionary worthies assembled to worship at the beautiful shrine. During 
Washington's presidency, the yellow four-horse chariot and grooms were punctual 
at service, and the beloved magistrate received from the congregation a homage 
almost beyond what is properly paid to man. Christ Church now stands in the 
midst of sordid business traffic, yet, on the Sabbath, its ancient dignity returns, 
and over the pavements, deserted except by worshippers, the faithful congrega- 
tion streams up to the portal, where so many noble memories enter before them. 



A CENTURY AFTER. 




IXTERIOR, CHRIST CHURCH. 



The Bishop — the ever- 
venerated White — was twit- 
ted in the July of 1776 with 
the risk of hanging. He 
had just sworn allegiance 
to the Union. " I perceive 
by your gesture that you 
thought I was exposing my 
neck to great danger by 
the step I have taken," he 
said ; " I know my danger, 
and that It is the greater 
on account of my being a 
clergyman of the Church of 
Eng-Iand. But I trust in 
Providence ; the cause is a 
just one and will be pro- 
tected." He died on a pleas- 
ant Sunday in 1836, and was buried here. The graves 
around are full of the bones of Revolutionary worthies and their 
families. Robert Morris, Richard Asheton, and many others who 
worshipped here, lie peacefully in the shade of walls that have shaded the 
whole noble assemblage of the "Republican Court," — the President, his coun- 
sellors and staff the famous Generals who achieved the Revolution, the skeptical 
Jefferson, as well as the humbh-pious Washington, besides the foreign ambassa- 
dors who accumulated in Philadelphia as the young nation was recognized by 
one European power after another. Here, at one time, and for many years, 
rested the remains of the gallant Mercer, who at Princeton gave up his life 
for his country. Here, also, for nearly sixty years, mouldered the bones of the 
witty, erratic, conceited, and — as modern historians have shown — treacherous 
Charles Lee, whose vanity led him to endeavor to supplant Washington, but 
failing in that ambition he would have gone over to the British, like Arnold, if 
death had not interfered. 

No better spot for meditation can be found by those Americans whose love 
of country is of a reflecting and retrospective kind than Christ Church, and no 
shrine is more hallowed with the sacred dangers of the epoch of Independence 
or the rich blessings of a Century After, 



FAIRMOUNT PARK. 




^ll^E are going to 
achieve what 
no human being has 
j-et accomplished. 
We shall e.xplore the Park ; and, 
without waste of time or returning 
on our own literary steps, as it 
were, we shall contrive to see all 
the "lions." It is unnecessarj'^ to 
.say that no merely mortal explorer 
ever achieved a promenade so pro- 
ductive. 

The hardiest pedestrian, exhausting the longest summer day. comes 
footsore, and, asked if he noticed this or that, answers wearily : " No. I was 
and brought up half-way. The Park is impenetrable." 



OlibLR\ AluKli Ai-.iiv niL. l-.v.^lN 



home 
tired, 



A CENTURY AFTER. 




But no limitations of 
time or endurance need 
hinder our description. 
\v shall be an Asmodeus, 
of which the crutches are 
pen and pencil ; its pas- 
sage may be limping, but 
it shall be tireless ; and 
its eyesight shall pierce 
not alone through Asmo- 
deus's roofs, but through 
the earth itself sometimes, 
to discover the lessons of 
life or the memories and 
secrets of the grave. 

The site of Fair- 
mount Park was propheti- 
cally marked out for feats 
of landscape-gardening. 
Some Edens are predesti- 
nate. The Adam of this 
new region, Penn himself, 
said in 1701, "my eye is 
on Fairmount." He meant 
to build his manor there. 
And certainly no site for 
a Governor's park could 
ARCHED PATHWAvs-FAiRMouNT. ^^ ^^ attractive as the 

graceful litde mountain, the first eminence that met the pioneer's eye in ascending 
the beautiful Schuylkill. 

Long after this — yet also long before its acquisition as a city pleasure- 
ground — the adjacent knoll became one of the typical gardens of America. As 
"Pratt's Garden," the estate, now merged in the Park, and localized as "Lemon 
Hill," attracted the botanists of fifty years ago. The late Mr. A. J. Downing — 
that artist in living landscape, whose pleasant destiny it was to cover the country 
with gardens — tells of this American Versailles, awarding it praise and promi- 
nence in his quietly-enthusiastic manner. Speaking of the spot in 1841, in the 



;^ 




FAIRMOUNT GARDEN. 



24 



A CENTURY AFTER. 



celebrated work he has left on Landscape-Gardening, he mentions it as " a fa- 
miliar example of the Geometric style ;" and goes on to inventory the quaint, 
Frenchified parterres devised by Pratt on the ruins of Robert Morris's estate: 
"Pratt's Gardens, when in their perfection some ten years ago," he observes, 
"were filled with a collection of the rarest and most costly exodcs, as well as 
a great variety of fine native trees and shrubs, which, interspersed with statues 
and busts, ponds, jets-d'cau, and water-works of various descriptions, produced 
certainly a very brilliant though decidedly artificial effect. An extensive range of 
hot-houses, as well as every other gardenesque structure, gave variet)' and interest 
to this celebrated spot." 

The scene thus extolled is obliterated at present among the attractions of a 
vastly larger domain; but it is well to remember diat, near the entrance of Fair- 
mount Park, there is included, as a mere contracted nucleus, an earlier master- 
piece; a plot which, after having served as an estate for the Revolutionary finan- 
cier, became in our fathers' youth the most elaborate garden in the country. 

Fairmount Park is unique in America in one respect. Every foot of ground 
teems with association. It is no raw creation, laid out in an inert and sleeping 
suburb, far in advance of a city's march of improvement, and ignorant of a his- 
tory. Long before we were a nation, this garden was trodden by footsteps that 
are now historic ; its very sods are sensitive ; they vibrate to the memories of near 
two hundred years. 




THE i-OKEBAY. 



FA J R M O UN T PA R K. 



25 








■^^Jt •' ^ "=0*^-^1 -.aV"-."- 

? f" ^ ■'■*''' * ""•' 

.-'" VIEW 

'^^^^f^^ri^l^ " ■^^''- ^- - The name of ' 



VIEW FROM TERRACE, NEAR 
ST AND- PIPE. 



^~^~ 



Fairmount Park " 
now extends its definine outline around the enormous 



^I^r:^-'-!:^;^^' landscape to the north and west, thouo^h the cognomen 
" Fairmount," in the minds of old-fashioned citizens. 



\-.:?5.' .".'.-'-^y^- applies more expressively to the basin and litde garden con- 

'\x nected with the water-works. We shall soon take leave of 

"Fairmount" in its restricted sense, to make acquaintance with "Fairmount" at large. 



26 A CENTURY AFTER. 

The scene we are about to explore contains nearly three thousand acres, 
divided by the river Schuylkill into tlie East and West Parks. We begin with 
the East Park. We tie up the thongs of our walking-boots, and with stout heart 
we begin the exploration. 

At once we step back half a century as we enter the trim little garden that 
basks at the base of Fairmount Basin. Everything is in the taste of 1822, the 
year when the water-works were put in operation. Steam was used for a few 
years anterior to the completion at that date of the dam and the large wooden 
water-wheels ; the latter are now yielding to turbines, with an ultimate pumping 
capacity of twenty-four thousand gallons a day. 

Straight, narrow pathways lead to the fountain, to the prospect-houses and 
belvederes, to the wheel-houses and race. The art of that day was v&ry Greek 
indeed, and we constantly find ourselves in porticoes and peristyles that are 
ultra-Athenian in pattern, while the material is as carefully restricted to wood as 
they say were the earliest huts of the Greek builders. As an exception, the 
bust of Graff, the engineer who designed this Marly, is set up under a monu- 
ment of Gothic design, an elegant little canopy in white marble. A few statues 
stud the grounds : that of Leda with her swan, whose slender jet falls into the 
forebay near the stand-pipe, is an American antique. It was at first the ornament 
of the old water-works, on the site of the present Municipal Buildings, and was 
modeled to represent Miss Vanuxem, a reigning belle of the day. William 
Rush, an ingenious carver of figure-heads for Philadelphia's infant marine, 
executed the statue ; from the same hand are the images of Wisdom and 
Justice (ornaments originally placed on a triumphal arch for Lafayette's reception 
in 1824) which now occupy the Saloon. Do not be shocked if you perceive a 
certain chilly atmosphere while contemplating them ; from those wooden faces 
twenty centuries — of weeks — look down upon you ; and the Saloon used to be 
the engine-house of the works. 

Near by, in the waste of waters outside, the pouring sheet of foam falls over 
the dam, and the surplus water from the pumps rolls into the Schuylkill again 
from the low arches at the river's edge. Here the finny tribes of the stream 
congregate — the cat-fish and rock-fish, the golden carp long ago escaped from 
garden ponds near by and multiplied since, and the black bass, newly introduced 
by pisciculture; and here, among others, idle gentlemen of independent fortune 
assemble to angle for them, precisely as similarly-situated Izaak Waltons fish 
perpetually from the bridges of Paris. The same faces are seen day by day in 
this group of city sportsmen. 



FAIR MOUNT PARK. 



27 




The river-side buildings, 
with the circular summer-house at 
the breastwork, and the interme- 
diate place of shelter with the 
large round columns — at which the 
lazy visitors tap idly, as at the 
wires of a gigantic bird-cage — are all in the 
pseudo-classic pattern, the pattern that our French 
visitors know as the st)4e of the First Empire. 
But the border of Old Fairmount Park away 
from the river, that which skirts the reservoir, 
shows another order of forms, and very sturdy and cyclopean they are. The 
rocky side of the basin overshadows the visitor as he enters the garden, and 
nods frowning above his head ; the stony ravines which cleave the hill are 
spanned — where the pathway winds up in zigzags — with gloomy and himiid 
arches, doubled and mounted on each others' shoulders, and altogether as grim- 
looking as the grottoes and caves in " Boboli's ducal bowers." High above 
them, just like one of the square bell-towers of Florence, rises an imposing 
structure — in the merciless language of prose, a stand-pipe ; a causeway leads up 
to it from the hill, over a circular arch : and so rich and harmonious is the 
design of these utilitarian structures, that the tower and vine-hung .system of 
arches and terrace-walks appear altogether like an illustration of Turner's for 
the journey of Childe Harold. Italy itself is not always so Italian-looking. 

We dwell on these details — among which every step makes a picture — to 
point out how compact and architectural are all the features; .so different from 



28 



A CENTURY AFTER. 




PORTICO OVER WHEEL-HOUSE. 



the garniture of some parks, made up principally of structures in rustic- work that 
bristle like porcupines with fibres of dead bark, and look generally like straw 
ornaments on a " what-not." Among these ponderous edifices, built for use yet 
turned to ornamental account, the artist is tempted to fill his sketch-book with 
effects, and forgets to wish for Europe. The diagonal edge of shadow under a 
great arch, the iron gloom of native rocks, the trail of vines in a steep gully 
down which an unraveled rivulet is depending, the square cut of a tower whose 
cornice, almost a hundred feet above the river, drives into the sky like a 
chisel, — these are grouped in a way that might tempt foreign artists from abroad, 
rather than allow our own to go thither for their themes. 

We clamber up the zigzags, — it is the beginning of what our muscles are to 
pay for this exploration, — and arrive at the summit of the basin, partitioned into 
several reservoirs. 



FA IRMO UaXT pa RK. 



29 



From the emi- 
nence of Pairmount 
Basin the pedestrian 
can throw his com- 
prehensive glance, not 
merely upon the many- 
bridged Schuylkill, but 
likewise upon the fea- 
tures of the land. To- 
ward the westward the 
view extends across the 
river to the crest of 
Belmont, whose tufts of 
hemlocks are planted 
at a height of two hun- 
dred and forty-three 
feet above tide-water. 
Old Fairmount Garden 
lies immediately be- 
neath ; the space just 
to the north, between 
the Basin and Green 
street, is laid out with 
straight walks, foun^ 
tains and resting- 
places, in the style 
rather of a Square than 
a Park, and forms a 
suitable introduction to 
the meandering ave- 
nues and wild beauties 
of East Park. To the 
eastward lies the city, 
with its spires and 
domes, among which 
are conspicuous the 
cupola and cross of 




FOUXTAI.N AND STAND-PIPE. 



3° 



A CENTURY AFTER. 



the Cathedral, and the group of temples at Broad and Arch streets, as well as 
the fluted shafts of Girard College. 

The rim of the basin is so extensive as to afford not one, but many, points of 
observation, and a still greater variety of views is obtained from the terrace or 
observatory connected with the adjacent stand-pipe. The purpose of this observa- 
tory is by no means restricted to ornament ; its massive pier conceals the pipe 
through which water is pumped to hll the stand-pipe just by, whose great elevation 

^ secures a flow into the upper 
stories of the city mansions : as 
the visitor paces the fine level 
causeway of the observatory, the 
rush and pulse of a great arterial 
system of water-supply is going 
on incessantly beneath his feet. 

We pause and loiter on the 
elevation, loth to descend from the 
eminence of so enviable an out- 
look. Other visitors are pausing 
also, — reading books In the ar- 
bors, watching- the racine-shells 
upon the river, or catching on 
their brows the fresh hemlock- 
scented breeze. There are those, 
too, who consider an arbor on a 
hill the ver}' place for a little 
quiet flirtation, as if privacy was 
nowhere so certain as in such a 
spot. But getting up on a ped- 
estal is never the safest way to 
avoid being seen, and the doings 
on the hill-top may come to be proclaimed on the house-top. Of all cruel be- 
trayals, however, of love's blind confidence, there is nothing to compare with the 
revelations that sometimes have been made by the camera-obscura, in the neigh- 
boring pleasure-grounds at Lemon Hill. F"red and Georgiana, straying from a 
croquet-party, have just discovered a pretty nook in the shrubber)^ ; Fred's arm — 
after much hesitation and desperate plucking-up of courage — has found a sort 
of orbit in which to surround the waist of Georgiana; when lo! from the terrible 




ARUOR ON BASIN. 



FAIR MOUNT PARK. 31 

lens of the camera, a complete picture of the transaction is projected on the field 
of vision ; the cynical instrument has recorded the whole sweet corned)-, for the 
benefit of disrespectful and scoffing spectators. It seems too cruel a thing to 
do ; but there is no reporter or interviewer so utterly unfeeling as the camera- 
obscura, and if you will take Georgiana there yourself, it will do it again. 

The idlers at the base of the reservoir, however, are more abundant than 
those at its top. On fine days the garden, with its saloon, porticoes, and 
summer-houses, is thronged ; nurse-maids and holiday servant-girls, in startling 
magnificence of costume, gather wisdom by inspecting the machiner}^ in the 
wheel-houses. The rock-fish and black bass and whiskered "catties," biting with 
considerable keenness at the bait of amateur fishermen, make the scene a lively 
one around the dam, both for themselves and for the spectators. The neat little 
steamboats at the landing (there are five of them now built) are heavily freighted 
with excursionists. Children are devouring gingerbread and getting into mischief 
It is the Tuileries Garden as contrasted with the Bois de Boulogne. It is 
domestic and humble, — a sort of big open-air nursery ; the pomps of equipages, 
and procession of fashion, are to be found in the freer portions of the Park. 

The driving begins at the Green street entrance, skirts the promontory of 
Lemon Hill, and pours forth over Girard Avenue Bridge into the ample latitude 
of the West Park. As we descend from the Reservoir and proceed northwardly, 
we are soon involved in the stream of smoothly-bowling carriages ; but since we 
are pedestrians, we may indulge ourselves w^th a more leisurely view of things 
than their occupants can enjoy. In a fine open space, between the East Park 
main drive and the river drive, not far from the Brown street gate, w'e are struck 
by the great monument to Lincoln, a structure thirty-two feet high. 

Hereabouts is the sole chalybeate spring known to visitors of Fairmount Park. 
A many-colored Moorish structure, like a kiosk, surmounts the fount and its 
drinking-vessels, and here, as at "Hathorn" or "Congress," in .Saratoga, we may 
see daily drinking the few enthusiasts who adopt the iron-flavored w^ater as a 
regimen. Ever}' stranger, as a matter of course, tastes the fountain on finding 
himself in the neighborhood, on the principle we all blindly follow, that anything 
nauseous must be somehow good for the soul. It is likely that the spring was 
known to William Penn himself; his farm of Springettsberry lay hereabout, and 
he probably alluded to this fountain in a letter wherein he says: "There are 
mineral waters, which operate like Barnet and North Hall, that are not two miles 
from Philadelphia." The water is medicinal enough, doubdess ; but it is almost 
a satire to include such a dose of physic in a great pleasure-ground. The true 



32 A CENTURY AFTER. 

medicines of the Park are Exercise, Recreation, Air, Beauty, and healthy Fatigue; 
and the owner of a good horse, or a sound pair of legs, who will come and take 
these delicious remedies every day, will have no need of the mineral spring. 

A short distance within the Green street gate is the Art Gallery, wherein a 
sufficiently interesting collection of paintings and statuary is always kept up. It 
is hardly necessary to describe an enterprise now in its infancy, a collection con- 
stantly changing, and a gallery which at present is but an earnest of what it is 
meant to be in the future. Many thousands of visitors, however, have already 
blessed the day when the idea of this local Louvre took' effect, enabling them 
without trouble or further journeying to get admission to such fine gallery-pictures 
as Rothermel's "Gettysburg," Pauwels' allegory of American Immigration, and 
other important works, to say nothing of interesting retrospective sketches, such 
as Birch's painting of the hill of Fairmount, as it appeared before the establish- 
ment of the water-works. The Fairmount Park Art Association is a body of 
disinterested citizens who give their time and means to collecting artistic monu- 
ments for the decoration of the Park, and to establishing a standard of taste for 
the proper discrimination and arrangement of such objects as may be offered. 
The}' have shown what they can do in the way of eliciting funds, by obtaining 
donations amounting to such figures as ten and twelve thousand dollars per 
year: the statue of the "Penserosa," and the bronze group of "The Dying Lioness," 
by Wolff, of Berlin, have been purchased. A contribution of twenty bronze cannon 
was made to the Association by Congress, in June, 1874, as material for an eques- 
trian statue of General ■ Meade. May the cultured gentlemen who unite to form 
the body keep their standard high, and admit no Art into this peerless landscape 
that shall form an insult to the beautiful Nature around! 

We are still lingering near the entrance, and, in point of geographical 
extent, have as yet covered absolutely nothing of the Park. The eminence of 
Lemon Hill is just before us ; opposite, on the other side of the river, and likewise 
within the Park, is Solitude, formerly the home of John Penn, grandson of the 
Founder of our State. 

The various portions of the pleasure-ground are still designated by the names 
of the private estates which went to compose it, such as The Hills (or Lemon 
Hill), Solitude, Sedgeley, Fountain Green, Mount Pleasant, Rocklind, Belleville, 
Ormiston, Edgeley, Woodford, Strawberry Mansion, Sweetbrier, Lansdowne, George's 
Hill, Belmont, Ridg-eland, and Chamouni : so numerous are the individual interests 
which must be sacrificed when a city gives a present of three thousand acres to 
the public. The circumstances under which the scheme took its rise, and was 



FAIRMOUNT PARK. 



33 



gradually prepared for, are curious enough, and date back to the location of the 
hydraulic works at Fairmount. 

Up to the establishment of these works, in 1822, the Schuylkill had attracted 
many wealthy citizens by its singular beaut)', and its waters laved the finest 
residences of the post-Revolutionary period. The various notables who lived on 
its banks will be mentioned as we describe the successive estates, while societies 
of gourmands met upon its shores to fish and to feast, with infinite jest and humor, 
and quaint affectadons of mystical brotherhood. It was for a long time the chosen 
locality of the rich, who found in its endless resources a gratification for every 
kind of taste, and the attractions of a perpetual watering-place. The operations 
of 1822, however, changed the face of affairs: the breastwork thrown from bank 
to bank to dam the water, altered the whole character of the river as far up as 
the cataract of the Falls of Schuylkill ; the latter was suppressed, and is now only 
a tradition : the channel filled up, and the river became a sort of lake, a great 
deal broader than formerly, and almost deprived of a current. The last-named 
feature, which is so favorable to the regattas of the Schuylkill Navy, was anything 
but a welcome one to the residents of the river-side mansions. Whether jusdy 



^' 







34 A CENTURY AFTER. 

or not, the locality got a bad name on sanitary grounds. The use of the water- 
power on Wissahickon Creek for various mills and factories came in likewise to 
damage the attractiveness of these sites, and the Schuylkill banks were no longer 
tempting to the same class of investors. From such causes the value of ground 
did not advance with that of other environs of Philadelphia, and the Commission, 
when the time came to estimate the lands sequestrated for the Park, were able 
to put a price on these acres something less than ruinous. In 1857 a number 
of public-spirited citizens clubbed together and bought the estate of Sedgeley, 
north of Fairmount, and presented it to the City as the nucleus of the Park. 
The idea thus started became quickly popular, and Councils were pushed on by 
public opinion to the purchase of land on a scale unprecedented in this country 
for such a purpose. While the Commission were valuing the grounds included 
in the plan, a second act of munificence surprised them, still more imposing than 
the donation of Sedgeley. A "Man of Ross" was found, while the neighboring 
property-owners were haggling, eager to sacrifice the ancestral acres of his race, 
as a free gift to the people forever. This was Mr. Jesse George, whose farm 
covered the magnificent mount now known as George's Hill, which eminence is 
the fittest pedestal of his honest fame. "This property," said Mr. George, in a 
simple and touching letter to the Commissioners in 1868, "has been the uninter- 
rupted home of my ancestors for many generations." His generous act of dedi- 
cation to the public was done "with a view of preserving it to their memory." 
Unwilling that his plantations should be cut into city lots to fill the pockets of 
speculators, he gave up the land, reserving only the use of a water-course, and 
saying simply to the Commission: "Your purpose will carry out my views." A 
sister, who enjoyed certain rights in the property, joined in the gift ; and now, as 
the dainty visitors pause in their equipages to throw an approving glance at the 
surprising outlook from the crest of George's Hill, they feel that they are debtors 
to the unpaid liberality of the fine old Pennsylvania yeoman. 

This general review of the manner in which the Park came to be made up 
of many parks, is a fit subject to occupy us for a moment or two as we stand 
at the foot of Lemon Hill, the first of these subordinate estates, and itself a 
pioneer in landscape gardening in its old form of "Pratt's" Grounds. The ter- 
races laid out by the worthy artificer are still beneath our feet, and over them 
we ascend to the mansion, which is merely a modification of the edifice he built 
here about 1800. But the recollection of the shrubberies, alleys, vases and busts 
of the former garden must yield in importance — though it remains freshly enough 
in the minds of the older inhabitants — to memories a great deal older. 




VIEW OF FAIRMOINT \VATF,R-\VORKS FROM LF.MON 1111,1,. 



36 A CENTURY AFTER. 

As "The Hills," this crest of land was the country-seat of Robert Morris, 
whose risking of a large private fortune in the equipment of the war made the 
American Revolution possible. All the bravery of Washington, and diplomacy 
of Franklin, and eloquence of Henry, and culture of Jefferson, would have vapored 
away into romantic failure, and our patriots have been the actors of an event- 
less traged)', if this capitalist had not ventured in the breach the whole of what 
he was worth in the world. This he did simply, cheeril)', and as a matter of 
course. It seemed to him merely a fortunate opportunity that he was on the 
spot, able to feed armies with his bounty, although the splendid boon would re- 
duce him from affluence to beggary if the war were lost. The anecdotes are 
numerous which show this spirit of uncalculating generosity in Morris. The race 
of capitalists who offer everj^thing they have to their country, without a thought 
of aught but the success of the cause, is quite extinct, and we look back to this 
wholesome, jovial-faced, broad-cheeked financier, who found money in exhaustless 
sums whenever it was wanted, like a fairy prince, as to a lost t)'pe. Once, when 
the war was most desperate, and resources were lowest, and the leaden spouts 
of Philadelphia had been all melted into bullets, Morris was at a ball at the 
Spanish Minister's, Senor Juan Mirailles. Washington had just written to the 
Secretary of the Board of War in dismay, to say that the last cartridges had been 
wet, and were useless. When the Secretary, Judge Richard Peters, came Avith 
his anxious face to the ball, where our pretty great-grandmothers were stiffly 
movingr in the minuet de la conr, Morris left the dance, conferred a moment with 
the Secretary, and told him of an opportune cargo of lead just arrived at the 
wharf, of which he was half-owner; without a thought of reimbursement, he first 
gave his own half of the shipload, and then treated for the remainder with the 
owners, who were present, and gave that. Surel}' if anything could make the 
portly Croesus dance lighter than ever the rest of the night, or even perchance 
attempt a bolero or fandango with Donna Mirailles, it would be the knowledge 
that a hundred stout hands were makingf cartrido;es on that eventful nio-ht, and 
supplies dispatched to the troops before morning. 

The waves of the sea were propitious to Morris's patriotism, and were perpetu- 
ally giving him the Iiint toward further bounties, which hint he was not slow to take. 
Beside the opportune arrival of lead, military stores and warm clothing turned 
up in the same apposite way: a ship laden with .such materials unexpectedly 
arrived to Morris at a moment when Washintrton's crreat heart, wrung- at the 
sight of nakedness and destitution in his heroic camp, was ready to relinquish 
hope. With uncalculating pity, the capitalist unloaded his costly cargo straight 



FAIRMOUNT PARK. 2,1 

into the camp where it was needed. Whenever the fortunes of the war were at 
the lowest ebb, a merchantman or privateer was sure to arrive at the whar\'es of 
the financier containing the .exact supply needed. The combatants got the habit 
of relying upon him. "What can you do for us?" said W'ashington, through 
the War Secretary, when the French fleet failed him and he conceived the plan 
of giving the invasion its finishing stroke in Virginia. "Let me know the sum 
you need," said the mone)-king, simply. And the estimates of Washington, for 
which Morris pledged his own notes to the amount of about one million four 
hundred thousand dollars, sufficed for the transport of the army into Virginia, 
where the British troops were captured at Yorktown. It is cheering to know 
that the enormous faith which led the Treasurer to make such offers was not 
betrayed. Although he lost one hundred and fifty vessels during the hostilities, 
yet his financial operations were on the whole successful, and he came through 
the war, as he wrote to an English friend, "about even." His ruin arrived later. 
It is but litde to the credit of the narrow legisladon and ungrateful leaders of 
that date, that Morris was soon after made to descend these terraces in the 
footsteps of a constable, to be placed in a prison, and that the close of his 
open-handed career was darkened with debt and misery, the results of great 
prophedc enterprises far in advance of his epoch, which swept Iialf the States of 
the L'nion into his calculations, and which other capitalists now more fortunately 
imitate. 

In 1 791 he advocated the Schuylkill, Susquehanna and Delaware Canal 
Company; in 1795 he formed, with two partners, the North American Land 
Company; the latter enterprise, by which six million acres of wild land were 
to be disposed of failed through his connection with one of the projectors, John 
Greenleaf, and caused his ruin. He had partly built a marble villa, (not far from 
the present Washington Square,) whose extravagant luxury shamed his eyes as he 
lay in die Prune Street Prison. He was released on the passage of the Bankrupt 
Law, in 1802, after four years of confinement, and crept into a small retreat on 
Twelfth street, above Chestnut, to hide his mortification and die — a victim ot 
the ingratitude of republics. 

Morris's pretty rustic lodge, with its crown of chimneys and circular two- 
story bay and low piazza, has disappeared from the Hill; what we see at present 
is the mansion substituted for it by the ambidous Henry Pratt. But some of 
the enormous trees on the lawn are of tlie Revolutionary epoch. One of these, 
a tulip-poplar, about a hundred yards from the portico, appears to be the largest 
of its kind in the Park or elsewhere ; and, with a couple of gigandc pines, 



38 



A CENTURY AFTER. 







LEMON HILL .MANSION. 



:-0f^$'^':^^i0^ 



its neighbors, forms a triangle of monu- 
ments to Independence. Under the 
.shadows of this proud group have often loitered the forms of Franklin the shrewd, 
and Judge Peters the witty, — both Philadelphians, but, in a larger sense, Americans; 
of Hancock, and of John Adams, who, while representative in Philadelphia, lived 
not far away, at Bush Hill ; of Samuel Morris, fearless hunter and Captain of 
tlie First City Troop of Cavalry; and of many officers of the bravest forces 
that time has seen. 

The broad plateau, on every fine day in summer, is covered with youth and 
merriment ; to look at the infinite, changing thron^r, it seems as if sickness, 
decrepitude, and misery had been obliterated from the face of the earth. Here, 
too, we are struck by the easy good-nature of an American crowd, and its native 



FAIR MOUNT PARK. 39 



spirit of chivalry. A visitor from Europe, in any such scene as this, is sure to 
be impressed with the manly deference with which ladies are treated, and made 
to feel as if they were simply a social equal — a distant relative of everybody 
present, to be deferred to with simple good-nature, but not beset with unwelcome 
c-allantry. Yon handsome damsel, who has left her party at some rustic game 
at Sedo-eley, comes down to the saloon for a glass of soda-water, and on her 
way back carries an apron-full of croquet-balls she has hired. She moves through 
the crowd of young clerks in their shirt-sleeves who stud the turf, with as litde 
embarrassment as if they were her brothers. This pair of pretty school-girls have 
brought a book of poetry, which they are devouring on a bench together. Yonder 
beautiful widow promenades alone, except for her litde child, whose recreation 
is the object of her visit. The people on the grass and garden-sofas just make 
way for the solitary goddesses wandering through the groves, but take no kind 
of offensive notice. How odd this seems to our continental visitors ! As they 
well know, there is no place of public resort in Europe where such a pleasant 
domesdcity is possible. At the London "Zoo," or at Hyde Park, a beautiful girl 
must not stray for one minute out of sight of her mother or her footman : at 
the Bois de Boulogne, or elsewhere in Paris, she must have her attendant it 
promenading, her authorized protector even if driving in a carriage, her white- 
capped housemaid to assist her in shopping expeditions. At the Villa Reale, m 
Naples, such a signorina could not remain ten seconds without hearing a compli- 
ment insinuated from behind into her ear, in a soft tenor voice, delicious in 
quality and detestable in import. In the Prater at Vienna, as several of our 
innocent countrywomen have lately found to tlieir cost, it is practically impossible 
for ladies to promenade without a male escort, who must not only be a genrieman, 
but a sort of gladiator, able to take up the dueling-sword at any moment with 
some white-jacketed Austrian officer who has "forgotten himself." In jusdce to 
European civilization, it must be granted that the gallants so offending conceive 
that they are acdng within their rights ; a long inheritance of traditional customs 
makes the woman who goes alone to a public resort seem to proclaim something 
which in our country- .she certainly does not. But the exemption of the United 
States from this inconvenient, if not disparaging, need of a condnual escort is 
none the less wholesome and grateful. The fact is, that in America beaudful 
women are produced in such multitudes that the escorting powers of society 
would be utterly exhausted if every belle had to be attended. A kind fate, there- 
fore, or a healthy advance in public feeling, has here ordained that beauty shall 
be self-protecting. It is by no means to be inferred that flirtadon, and a great 



4° 



A CENTURY AFTER. 



deal of it, does not accompany our system. The rights of coquetry are cosmo- 
politan. Many a bachelor has respectfully addressed a pretty neighbor in the 

crowds upon the summit of 
Lemon Hill, and without re- 
buff; many an acquaintance 
has been formed between 
strangers ; many a match, it 
is likely, has had the whis- 
pering pines of the old grove 
for its accomplices. But the 
"promiscuity" is nothing 
more than what might 
sometimes be found in 







MUSIC STAND AT LEMON HILL. 



the houses of the inhabitants, and the American lady, whether accessible or 
reserved, is simply treated according to the suggestion held out by her manners. 
Beside the house is a pavilion for musicians ; a good band plays here in fine 
weather, on days alternating with those on which the music is heard at George's 
Hill and at Belmont. The instrumentalists are invariably the country^men of 
Beethoven, Mozart, and Wagner; while the selections quite ignore the "music 
ot the future," and as constantly proceed from Italian opera, or opera-bouffe. It 
must be rather a sad thing to be one of the German musicians who are so 



FA /Ji MOUNT PARK. 41 

abundant in this country ; they are constantly fated to play melody in which they 
do not believe, and to be called bores if they play that which has been composed 
by their own countrymen and which is the music of their convictions. 

When the Teutonic pipes are warbling, all the multitude collects and listens. 
The garden-seats are filled with delighted women, and the cavaliers are standin'^r 
near. Our musicians have no complaint to make of the want of auditors ; better 
ofif than men of most professions, as long as they are in business they advertise 
themselves to a multitude of ears. They are heard by men, women, and children ; 
and — what might seem to indicate almost a strained attention — the)- are heard 
to the point of wearing off the grass: the turf hereabouts cannot be renewed 
often enough to keep even a musical memory green ; it is ground away to the 
stubs, though that would appear to be an unexpectedly harsh effect of "the 
listening ear;" where the band jDlays, the Hill is bald. 

The royal liberality of the rule which allows the whole turf to be walked 
upon, is perhaps more appreciated than any other single feature. Nothing makes 
the ordinar}^ citizen feel so much like a landed proprietor, strolling on his own 
lawn, as this freedom of range over the green sod. He proudly points out to 
his visitor from other regions that "there is no keep off the grass in Fairmount 
Park." His children play on the sward, picking dandelions, or returning with 
wilder flowers from the secluded ravines. Up to the jDresent time, notwithstanding 
the immense multitudes distributed over the grounds, the disturbance has not 
affected the greenness of the turf, except in a few crowded spots, which ha\e, 
so far, been allowed to suffer rather than break a glorious libert)-. With the 
advent of still more enormous numbers, restriction may be necessary; but it is 
to be hoped that this coming-down to a general doom may long be avoided, and 
that the fields and slopes may continue to be Avhat they are now — a landscape 
dotted everywhere with human figures. 

There is no part of the whole scene which, when the band is not playing, 
need miss it less. Lemon Hill is a resort of birds, and a plantation of pines. 
The former, with their varieties of reed instruments, make the Hill sometimes 
resound with a whole orchestra, to which the /Eolian hres suspended by nature 
in the pine-tree are added as a harp-symphony. The winged musical societies 
have for half a century known the suburban Schuylkill as a place where they 
could discuss their melodious affairs with little fear of interruption. They have 
become astonishingly tame, and an explorer of quiet habits need never lack a 
bird within a yard or two ol his head. The pine-trees form a grove surrounding 
the house, and are associated with fine specimens of oak, horse-chestnut, maple. 



42 



A CENTURY AFTER. 




SHOWER ON LEMOV HILL 






\ I 

.>1 



tulip-poplar, and other trees The 

terraces to the east are set out 

the usual flowering shrubs, such 

spirea, pyrus japonica, wygelia, lilac, 

deutzia, and forsythea. But the shrubbery and deciduous trees must yield in 

dignity to the pines. 

A finer grove of these impressive trees is seldom seen. The top of the Hill 
seems like an acre cut out of the deepest recess of a primitive Maine forest. 
The principal pair of pine-trees — known to be older than revolutionary date — are 
celebrating their supra-centennial years, from May to May, in thick confused 
whispers far up in the air. The remaining nobles of the company are but litde 
younger. Like all pines of great age, the foliage begins its growth at a con- 
siderable height. Successive loppings of decayed branches are always necessary 
as such trees grow older, gradually denuding the trunk to a more and more lofty 
point. The majesty of a century-plant of the coniferous kind is therefore a dif- 
ferent thing from the beautj- of a fresh )-oung evergreen, bathing the earth beneath 



FAIRMOUNT PARK. 43 

its brooding boughs with dew and shadow. These great pines are Hving pillars, 
hrml\- planted like the columns of a cathedral, and lifting up rich capitals, wrought 
with a leafage diat has proved to be more enduring than marble often is. From 
the far-away tops proceeds a never-ceasing murmur. In a gale, such as frequently 
passes down tlie river and cuts the top of Lemon Hill, the volume and energy 
of the sound are really startling. It is impossible, on merely shutting the eyes 
at such a time, not to be persuaded that you are upon some rocky coast, hearing 
the tumble of a hea\'y sea after a storm. The rise and fall of the roar, as well 
as its character of sound, make the illusion perfect. You open your eyes — the 
sky is deep blue and full of merry winds, and the birds are boldly rocking on 
the boughs, ready to sing in the pauses of the gale. It is but a storm of joy. 

The tempests that assault the Alpine altitude of Lemon Hill are always of 
a comical cast. The summer showers, abundant enough in our changeable climate, 
are certain to take all the visitors by surprise. Suddenly, while the young peo- 
ple are bending over their croquet, and the )ounger people are chasing their 
trundle-hoops and butterflies, and the youngest people of all are gravely riding 
their wooden hobby-horses in the carrousels, the air darkens: a hood of clouds 
has rapidl)- drawn itself over the scene, the sports are fitfully lighted up by a 
quick glimmer, like a reflection from a mischievous mirror, and the first drops fall, 
surprisingly big and ominous. Then the rush begins. The girls run in to the 
mansion shrieking and lauyhinof. Those who ha\e washable dresses let them 
trail over the wet grass, those who are in silk quickly pin the skirts over their 
heads, and arrive at the house like so many dominos thronging in to a masked 
ball. The young fellows come after, loaded down with implements of the games. 
The honest old house suddenly becomes juvenile again, being filled in all its 
pores and recesses with youth and laughter. The lower piazza chokes up: the 
upstairs balconies foam over with gay and radiant heads. Meanwhile the rain 
increases, and at length comes down in straight, solid cylinders like slate-pencils, 
that dint round holes into the ground. The pines are angrily roaring, and the 
thunder ratdes from time to time. The imprisoned crowd are eating ice- 
creams, and imperdnently regarding the storm as a melodrama, got up for 
their particular entertainment. When the lightning breaks, there is a sudden 
vision — the Schuylkill flashing like an iron shield, the village of Greek porticoes 
and pediments which makes up the water-works suddenly gleaming with the lustre 
of ivory, and relieved against the green side of the reservoir like a cameo. The 
long bridge at Fairmount shows all its arches, resembling the sockets of a row of 
teeth, and, so to speak, grins from bank to bank; then the flash is gone, and the 



44 



A CENTURY AFTER. 



landscape is dark again. The Bastile of prisoners presently grows uncomfortable — 
the time is long, the crowd is stifling, the provisions, perhaps, as will happen in 
a siege, have given out. Then, when it is least expected, the sun breaks forth 
merrily once more; the trees around the porticoes wave their branches, heavy with 
rain, and frame the prospect with arches of dripping silver; the river turns blue, 
the prospect of the water-works and distant city basks placidly in the late light, 
and the descending sun catches on the distant spires and crosses and makes 
them glitter against the sinking clouds, while the glad youngsters participate in a 
general jail-delivery. 

Lemon Hill on its eastern side descends by terraces in the direction of the 
Park entrance on Brown street. Here the stroller may slake his thirst at a 
little drinking-fount, enclosed in a marble niche, more convenient than the 
neighboring fish-pond, and yielding a pleasanter flavor than the chalybeate spring. 

The Garden and Lemon Hill are adjacent to the thickly-built part of the 
city; they are foot-beaten, crowded and democratic. Leaving out of the question 
for the present the larger breadths of West Park, we will prove that wild and 
lonely scenery can be viewed without crossing the river, and will introduce 
the reader to Wissahickon Creek, which enters the Schuylkill on this side at 
the upper end of East Park, within two miles of the entrance. 




FOOT OF LEMON HILL. 




nPHE Wissahickon is 
a stream which em- 
phatically contradicts the 
general rule that water- 
courses dry up with the 
settlement of a country. When a rivulet 
has been directed through a wooded 
tract, the removal of the woods will 
usually destroy the rivulet. The present 
example is an exception, and there is 
deeper water in the Wissahickon than 
when the Indians made it their favorite 



-V.','.V'C'-'>! 



46 A CENTURY AFTER. 

hunting-course. The cause of the anomaly is this : a quantity of new streets 
have been cut through the heisjhts about Germantown and Chestnut Hill, 
developing in their excavation numerous natural springs ; these are now drained 
into the Wissahickon, enriching its resources, and creating the strange instance 
of a torrent actually augmented by civilization. 

Four hamlets, in 1683, composed the township bought from Penn by a well- 
to-do and cultured band of Germans, incorporated as the Frankfort Company. 
Three of them were named in the German tongue, Sommerhausen, Crefeld, and 
Krisheim; the fourth in English, Germantown. The settlement, only a year 
younger than Philadelphia, proceeded to advance, neck-and-neck with the capital. 
The emigrants were affecdonately attached to Penn, who had converted some of 
them to his doctrine in old Europe ; his visit to the original Krisheim, in Ger- 
many, had been paid in June, 1677. The Frankfort Company were the pioneers 
of German emigration to this country, since become so enormous. Their agent 
in America was a young Doctor of Laws, of high culture and probity, named 
Francis Daniel Pastorius. The headquarters of his agency were in Germantown, 
where his mild compatriots raised acres upon acres of flax, and spun it under 
their low, German-built gables. The settlers surrounded themselves with memo- 
rials of their former homes in the Old World, planted vineyards and made an 
abundance of beer, and connected their lives as easy-going settlers with their 
former existence by means of souvenirs and costly importations. Pastorius was 
a botanist and horticulturist. A New England poet, attracted by the moral and 
material beauty of the early Pennsylvania settlement, has painted the peaceful 
serenity of that Frankfort band in their Arcadian exile, 

"Where, forest-walled, the scattered hamlets lay 
Along the wedded rivers .... Through the deep 
Hush of the woods a murmur seemed to creep — 
The Schuylkill whispering in a voice of sleep; 
All else was still; the oxen from their ploughs 
Rested at last, and from their long day's browse 
Came the dun files of Krisheim's home-bound cows." 

Cresheim Creek is a wild rivulet whose name perpetuates the point of 
departure of some of these earliest emigrants from the Fatherland. The relics 
of Pastorius and his company are lost, except in his v.-ritings and the nomencla- 
ture of the district. It is not known where he was buried. The Wissahickon, 
which was the Baptistery and haunt of troops of German mystics, changed its 
solemn character. The active water of the stream was used to turn a chain of 




DEVIL b I'c.iDi,, .Mol 111 ul LKt-SlI I.I.M CKIilUC. 



48 A CENTURY AFTER. 

mills which stretched, a few years ago, for miles back from its confluence with 
the Schuylkill. On a small affluent of the Wissahickon, a Hollander, Wilhelm 
Rlittinghausen, assisted by his sons, Claus and Gerhard, ran the first paper-mill 
built on the continent. This family, whose name became anglicized into Ritten- 
house, afterwards gave birth to the first and greatest of American astronomers. 
The use of Wissahickon as a milling stream continued until the establishment 
of Fairmount Park, when the old mills were successively removed, leaving the 
virgin waters as pure as they were before there was an America. 

Not far up the Wissahickon, from its mouth, is Greenwood dam, a sort of 
key to the ardst's position in taking sketches, since the views on every side make 
the most beaudful effects. It is a nook where in all directions are distributed 
the materials that a painter loves — the old bridge, the sluice escaping around an 
abandoned water-gate, the ridges of rocks tumbling up the hills in fantastic shapes, 
the precipices dark with clinging woods. 

The secluded spot where Cresheim Creek empties into the Wissahickon is 

sdll more impressive, and as different as possible from anything one expects in 

park scenery. It is like a gorge in the most tameless mountain-pass, and reminds 

the traveler of some of the capricious movements of the Saco near its head-waters. 

To attain its bed in the cradle of the Wissahickon, Cresheim leaps wildly down 

in a little cascade, and then expands into a black and whirling pool, enwreathed 

by thick ancestral trees, where it murmurs sullenly for awhile before escaping into 

the eager current of Wissahickon's rock-chilled waters. After any of the annual 

spring freshets, or in other seasons towards the twilight of the day, the black 

witches' cauldron of this diabolic pool is not to be forgotten by those who have 

approached it. 

A savage place — as lonely and enchanted 
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted 
By woman wailing for her demon-lover ! 

It is the amazement of every visitor who is taken there. Though but a 
morning's walk from the city, this barbaric scene is a taste of the primitive 
wilderness in its rudest expression. A Park containing such a bit of Nature is 
already full-furnished, and hardly needs the hand of "improvement." 

The first settlers on these streams had but few callers from Philadelphia. 
A German-speaking race, at Germantown was their neighbor. They called 
their woods the Wilderness, and never in their wildest dreams imagined that 
visitors from the great city would penetrate their wild haunt as a mere matter 
of pleasure. 




JD'f 



•/T^' 



devil's pool, CRESIIKIM CREEK.— LOOKINCi DDWN. 



50 ■ A CENTURY AFTER. 

The nook where Cresheim Creek hesitates and collects its faculties before 
making up its mind to plunge into Wissahickon is as secret a spot as can be 
found in the Park. It is not to be discovered without some perseverance and some 
pedestrianism, and practically is a safe spot for the lonely wanderer who wants 
to hug his solitude in the bosom of Nature. Ladies do not often come to the 
Devil's Pool. If any feminine explorers reach it, they are delicate city girls out 
of the villas of Germantown, bearing down upon it in a flutter of conquest and 
forced bravery, strong in numbers and amply provided with male defenders, 
surprising the rocks with a spread of skirts cut in the daintiest summer fashion, 
and bending over the black mirror of the Pool countenances that are ready to pale 
at the thought of their own courage. Beautiful enough in any part of its length, 
it is only at this enchanted basin that Cresheim becomes dramatic; a stream may 
be graceful and smooth and shady for miles together, but your picnic party or 
your pair of lovers will follow it without interest until it gathers itself up for a fall, 
or revolves upon itself in a maelstrom. It is when hesitating that a woman is 
most lovely, it is when coiled that the serpent exerts its fascination, and it is 
when dilated for a plunge into the larger stream that this shy rivulet becomes 
poetical. In the deep cauldron of the Pool is concentrated the essence of its 
career; it takes the water stolen from far-off country springs, the ripples of 
innocent rills blue with forget-me-nots, the freckled shadows of pebble-paved 
brooks that have never been troubled with darker guests than minnows and dragon- 
flies, and here in this black bowl it makes them all seem sombre. Under the 
shade of evergreen trees and within the hollow palms of the rocks it stirs up 
a cup of mystery and of sorcery, and the puzzled city visitors feel that, whatever 
it is all about, the fifth act of the play is somehow reached at this spot, and that 
the stream was not the same in its milkwarm rustic life in the open country, and 
will not be the same after the green curtain drops upon it at its emergence, 
where the dazzling sunlit flow of Wissahickon stretches before its cfiibouchure 
like a row of footlights. So the rare visitors — the cits and fashionable dames 
who have left their carriage at the little wooden bridge just below, or the genteel 
cottagers from Germantown and Chestnut Hill — feel rather strange and shy at 
the Devil's Pool, like auditors at a drama in some foreicrn lancjuaee, recollecting- 
that superstitious colonists in the infancy of the Province really did resort here 
for mystical observances; that rites of baptism have been murmured over the 
stream in strange German jargon, before the region was well known to settlers 
of our race; that the Hermits of the Ridge must have knelt often around the dark 
basin, and that the murmur now in their ears has formerly been the accompani- 



FAIRMOUNT PARK. 



SI 



^ -'■<?•? 



merit to strange and wizard rites. The rocks and crevices around have been 
explored, too, by more sordid and less disinterested seekers, looking after gold 
as the Monks for truth. In an earlier state of geological science than our own. 
the bending of a witch-hazel wand was sagely considered to be a better indication 

of the presence of precious 
metal than the mixture of 
quartz rock with granitic 
rock, or the character of 
river-sand in the pan-ful; 
and amateur wizards, in 
those times of robust faith, 
did actually go plodding 
about with their harmless 
switches, alike over sand- 
stone and limestone, igne- 
ous and sedimentary for- 
mations, rocks made of sea- 
shells and rocks made of 
slate, waiting until the hazel 
should twist and reveal the 
mine. Not half a mile be- 
low the outlet of Cresheim 
Creek the solid rock has 
been excavated to a depth 
of thirty feet by some of 
these primitive Argonauts. 
Just here, too, was the 
scene of a skirmish during 
the long, skillfully-defended 
action at Germantown, 
Cresheim turning slowly in 
its pool, and sending thence 
to the sea, certain stains of 
patriot blood that cost dear and traveled far. Just below the mouth of the 
Wissahickon, again, between that stream and the Falls of the Schuylkill, is the 
site pointed out by the neighbors as the "Battle-Ground," — the spot where the 
British left flank, composed of Hessian Chasseurs, under Knyphausen, were 




-l^V.'^ 



DOGAVnon — CRESHEIM CREEK. 



52 



A CENTURY AFTER. 



cannonaded by the prudent Armstrong, who dared not risk a bayonet charge, 
and thus saved his portion of our troops for future use at Yorlctown. 

Between these two points of combat — from the "Battle-Ground" near the 
mouth of the Wissahickon to the scene of the engagement on Cresheim Creek 
— the distance is about four miles. Yet the mouth of Cresheim Creek, though so 
solitar)' and remote, is by no means the uppermost point on Wissahickon which 
the Park includes. The reach of the latter stream up which the Park stretches 
is in fact seven miles. 

Wissahickon Creek, as a feeder of the Schuylkill within the city limits, and 
important as an immediate contributor to the civic water-cistern at Fairmount, 
has been imprisoned for these seven miles and made a Park ornament. The 
motive, in a utilitarian sense, is the purification of the drinking supply. Already, 
at the time when the Park was projected, the grasp of trade had been fastened 
on the wild Indian stream for a great distance, and the usefulness of its strength 
for turning machinery was being put to the test in many mills and factories: 
it was easy to foresee the time when the Wissahickon, stained with dyestuffs and 
poisoned with chemicals, would be but an unsafe conduit for the city to drink at. 
So the outline of the Park was stretched into a very irregular shape to include 
the first seven miles of its length, and the enclosed mills were suppressed, or 
allowed to remain with a fixed period of determination. To this wise foresight 
it is owing that, in the first place, the city has a drinking-water greatly purer on 
analysis than that of any of the principal American towns, and that, in the second 
place, one of the most beautiful of known water-courses is snatched from the 
grimy fingers of manufacture, and reclaimed for the wilderness. Some of the 
mills have the right of running for a short time longer, on such privileges as 
a five years' or a seven years' lease ; but their number is inconsiderable, and 
their influence on the purity of the Schuylkill crystal is practically naught; while 
the Wissahickon stream is every hour dissolving away some last vestige of 
mortar and cement, or crumbling under its tongue the foundations of some deserted 
structure that formerly dominated and overshadowed it, and thus licks itself clean 
again from the contamination, as wild creatures will. 

Besides the factories, in the days before the Park's existence there were the 
rural taverns, — rustic structures suitable for the entertainment of the trotting-parties 
that haunted the "Ridge" and the "Wissahickon Road." Several of these, under 
proper restrictions, have been allowed to remain for the present, and they furnish 
welcome stations where modest refreshments can be procured or horses baited 
or row-boats hired for exercise on the water. Not far from Greenwood Dam, as 




Til !•: WISSA 1 1 ICKON — SUMMER. 



54 A CENTURY AFTER. 

the artist at luncheon-time furls his white umbrella and closes his portfolio, the 
refreshing porticoes await him of Maple Spring Hotel, — an abode consecrated by 
the residence of an oddity who proudly tells you he is an artist himself 

A self-taught sculptor, and a natural Jack-of-all-trades and mechanician, the 
hero of "Maple Spring" was first discovered in the depths of the Anthracite 
Coal-Region, at the brisk mining-town of Ashland. His mission there was to 
teach the roueh colliers the beneficent influences of Art. "See this twisted laurel- 
root," he would say, lecturing a group of blackened miners over a circle of "glasses 
all 'round," "to your uninstructed eyes it appears a mere shapeless snag; but 
turn it over, give a hitch to its tail and a jerk to its head, let the light fall on 
these glass beads I have inserted to form its eyes, and you have the original 
Demon of the Coal-mine, to whom you are all in slavery." And the lecturer 
would conclude by singing, in a cracked, quavering voice (to which the Demon 
kept good time) some Plutonic stanza about "Down in a coal-mine, underneath the 
ground." The figures in his sculpture-gallery, augmented by his daily industry, 
grew to be an enormous museum. Every object in the animal kingdom, every 
possible and impossible bird, reptile, or quadruped, together with the whole crew of 
Demonology, was represented or caricatured in the collection. Well-known human 
characters, political or otherwise, likewise found their representatives in this imperial 
gallery of statues, by no means flattered in the matter of likeness. For each 
prominent object the inventor had his jocular anecdote or legend. Curiosities 
from the mines, and mysterious-looking bas-reliefs in hard coal, resembling Egyptian 
idols of basalt, were added to the series. Not too proud to prop up his artistic 
career with a practical basis of trade, this Phidias of the mountains kept a house 
of entertainment ; he was always ready to drop his inspired chisel for the duties 
of hospitality, and poured out ale and eloquence impartially. When the collection 
had swelled to many hundreds, the genius found his sphere among the colliers 
too contracted. Emerging from the mines, he moved eastward with all his laurels 
to this romantic spot, and established himself as the unrivaled ardst and landlord 
of "Maple Spring." He has converted the place into a kind of Prospero's grotto. 
All the imps and familiars of the Black Art seem to have congregated around 
his person. To see him in the midst of his demoniac congress is to realize the 
witches' Sabbath of Faust. You ask for the proprietor, and with some little cere- 
mony the bar-tender leads in the mysterious creator of so many phantasmal 
existences: you look at him with curiosity. "Fayther" Smith, as the colliers used 
to call him, is (or was, if he has not perchance anticipated this publication, and 
slipped the cable of life while the printer is copying his eulogy) a personage of 



FAIR MOUNT PARK. 55 

incalculable antiquity, all except his hair, which is young every Christmas. You 
see a compact, active old man, with flexible hands and a quizzical face, thatched 
over with a superb edifice of dark locks, as glossy and serpendne as his own 
bunches of laurel-roots. The museum into which he introduces you is simply a 
gallery' of twisted wooden monstrosities, dug up out of the wild laurel-thickets of 
Pennsylvania and Maryland. In every gnarled root or complicated branch the 
prolific fancy of the artist sees a goblin or a caricature. Lopping the offshoots 
here and there, moundng the specimen, and brightening it up with a "lick of 
varnish," the senseless wood is changed into a form of art. As the result of 
this singular industry, condnued over so many years, the saloon is thronged with 
an infinity of the strangest creatures ; reptiles in groups and knots, fighting or 
embracing, or coiled in slumber ; birds on the nest, squirrels and wood-tortoises, 
with many a creature that it would require a new Adam to name, squirm and 
writhe over the walls and shelves. There are large mirror-frames composed 
entirely of the dropping necks and tapering heads of snakes ; others seem like 
families of birds'-nests, out of which the cunning eyes of brooding hen-birds are 
lifted. In the midst is the family portrait-gallery of the Devil: Mr. and Mrs. 
Beelzebub, with the reigning princes of their dynasty in China, India, Mexico and 
Africa, are set up in the most accurate likeness, and the most appalling abund- 
ance. Of each hero the proprietor knows the inmost history and the most 
discreditable story, and, taking the figure in his hand, will make it turn and 
jump and hide and run, in illustradon of the proper point of the lecture. In 
the balcony close by, the inexhaustible artifex has made a great series of stained 
Gothic windows, ingeniously patched up out of rejected fragments of colored 
glass ; and the view from these casements commands a singular system of 
terraces, fountains, cascades, rockworks, labyrinths, and flower-beds, laid out on 
the slope of the hill by the same tireless genius. What wonder that the ingenious 
old man firmly believes his museum to be the most marvelous affair in the 
world, and is firmly persuaded that the Park Commission, his new landlords, 
ought to purchase it of him at a round price, for the perpetual benefit and 
instruction of the citizens ! 

The road which sweeps between the door and the stream is broad and good. 
It is one of the most romantic carriage-drives in the western hemisphere. The 
row-boats which are for hire here, or at the other neighboring hotels, are in 
constant request for parties of holiday-makers. So many young women have 
learned to row of late daj's that the assistance of the awkward sex is voted 
•quite unnecessary, and nothing is more common than to see the stream occupied 



56 A CENTURY AFTER. 

by boats full of beautiful creatures urging- their way over the lake-like expanse, 
like so many barges of Cleopatra, propelled by fair arms, and enlivened by 
choruses of sopranos. Whether at "Wissahickon Hall," at "Maple Grove," at 
the "Log Cabin," or further on at the "Valley Green" and "Indian Rock" 
hotels, the entertainment is temperate and cleanly administered, the assistance to 
the tired horse or hungry driver is timely and welcome, and these establishments 
are rather the guardians of order than the accomplices of license along this shy, 
shadowy road. The highway in question is devoted almost entirely to pleasure, 
and is not a business thoroughfare. Though broad enough and smooth enough 
for the evolutions of an army, it is only known to shake to the tread of multi- 
tudinous festival parties — German societies with oak-wreaths around their heads, 
or omnibus loads of school-girls in white muslin, or, less social, the solitary trotter 
of the unmatched steed, who is alone, because nobody can keep up with him or 
pass him. The road is laid out, with considerable expense of engineering skill, on 
whichever side of the precipitous Wissahickon will best afford a passage : when the 
bank becomes too mountainous the carriage-way raises no quarrel, but humbl}- 
passes over, as at the Red Bridge; the visitor has thus along his whole course 
the most level footing underneath his steps, and the wilder side of the stream, 
unspoiled by any path, opposite his eyes and reflected in the water. A rocky 
precipice, veiled with the drooping boughs of hemlocks and pines, and planted 
thick with oak-trees, is constantly before his sight : the birds, which have never 
been seriously disturbed since the occupation of the continent, sing riotously in 
the thick forest. Jutting angles of rock crop out at great distances up the steep 
bank, or rise giddily a hundred feet higher than the water. The full current 
of the stream is in most passages as placidly level as a lake, swimming dreamily 
onward to taste of the two rivers and then broaden to the sea. In the autumn, 
while the white haze of Indian summer hangs over the hill-sides, or collects in a 
thick blanket on the bed of the Creek, the banks are dressed in Titanic bouquets 
of the most gorgeous colors, the scarlet and yellow of the different maples 
relieved against the iron-red of the oaks and the blackish-green of the pines. 
In winter the sheet of water clothes itself in crystal armor, over which the merry 
steel of the skater chases the most eccentric arabesques ; as winter progresses 
the full tides come down and break up the ice, which freezes again on the next 
cold night, thus melting, piling together and re-congealing, until the whole system 
of patched and piled up block-work is finally carried down to the river in the 
thaws of spring. The "freshets of Lammas-tide," at the beginning of August, 
were always dreaded by the early settlers, and are still formidable. 




WINTER ON THE WISSAHICKON — MOONLIGHT. 



58 A CENTURY AFTER. 

On the bank of Wissahickon, close to its junction with the river, oral 
tradition places a bloody incident of the batUe of Germantown. The date is 
October 4th, 1777. General Armstrong, with three thousand of the Pennsylvania 
Militia, had been instructed to march down the Manatawny (now Ridge) Road, 
to Robison's Mill (then \'an Deering's), and dislodge the left tiank of the enemy, 
a detachment of the mercenaries of Hesse and Anspach. While Washington is 
moving back with orderly deliberation from his unsuccessful attack on the British 
main body in Germantown, Armstrong's baffled train-band is threading its way 
in active retreat through the tangled hill-paths the Pennsylvania gunners knew 
so well. A band of the Continentals, in bucktail fur-caps and blue shirts, rushed 
into an old deserted mansion as if for shelter. Their pursuers, a squad of Hessian 
chasseurs in bear-skin caps, dashed through the Wissahickon and made for the 
ruin, half hidden in the reddenino- autumn woods and in the thick fog of that 
October day. As the Germans, in the proportion of twenty to ten, began to 
ransack the house ior fugitives, one of them saw through a window the figure 
of a woman standing on the precipice across the stream, and making the wildest 
gestures of warning. The signal was not heeded, and the rooms and garrets 
were fruidessly searched by the eager soldiers, when smoke began to issue 
from the cellar, which had not yet been explored. The house had been in fact 
used by the British for the deposit of some powder ; and as the Continentals, 
emerging from the cellars and retreating safely through a hidden gully or under- 
ground passage, issued a hundred yards awa)- in the Avoods, the kegs they had 
ignited gave issue to a tremendous explosion, which sent through the air the 
fragments of the building and of the bodies of the too-confident pursuers. 
This legend gives interest to the well-remembered site of Robison's mill. 

The Battle of Germantown, whose wide-spread action brushed at one side 
the banks of the Wissahickon, was more particularly concentrated around the old 
Chew Mansion, a structure still existing in the heart of that ancient burgh. The 
fights hereabout, whether at Cresheim's mouth or Wissahickon's, were episodes. 
Washington showed in his action at Germantown his masterly qualities of prompt 
acdon and dignified withdrawal. His surprise movement on the sleeping camp 
of Germantown, though unsuccessful, was not lost. What proved his sagacity in 
making it was, that the British troops were too thoroughly amazed and discom- 
fited to pursue their advantage. All the resources of Howe's barracks-full of 
reserves in Philadelphia, of tory American forces and hired Grand-ducal troops, 
did not lortify the invaders to the point of chasing up their victory. 



OLD CITY RELICS. 



CARPENTERS" HALL, THE CRUCIBLE OF OUR UNION. 



A LTHOUGH the Declaration of Independence in one sense created this nation, 

the eadier councik of patriots from the thirteen Colonies were the true 

beg-inners of our Union, and these councils were held, not at the State-House, 



but at Carpenters' 
Hall. When the 
C o 1 o n i e s — filled 
with angry sympa- 
thy with Massa- 
chusetts for the 
oppression of her 
liberties, the de- 
nial of her right 
to try o ff e n s e s 
committed on her 
soil, and the clos- 
ing of her port — 
determined to 
meet and deliber- 
ate on measures 
for the common 
defense, the capi- 
tal of Pennsylva- 
nia was chosen as 
the largest and 
most central city, 




—it had then about 
30,000 inhabitants 
and 5000 houses. 
Summer w a s 
but just over, as 
the day agreed 
upon came round, 
and the Assembly 
had adjourned 
v/ithout making 
any provision for 
the offer of the 
State-House to 
the gathering of 
delegates. The 
' Carpenters there- 
upon proffered 
their new building, 
(erected five )ears 
previou-sly. It had 
already been used 
for town-meetings 



held to protest against the 



CARPENTERS HALL. 

acts of Parliament, and the association of master 
carpenters, formed in George I.'s day, was made up of sturdy friends ot 
independence. The First Congress, however, which met in this Hall ot the 
Carpenters on September 5th, 1774, was by no means a unit lor liberty. 
Pennsylvania herself was pardy represented in it by a brilliant politician of 
royalist sentiments, Joseph Galloway, whose proposal 



that the kin<r should 



6o ■ A CENTURY AFTER. 

appoint a President-General over all the colonies was warmly supported by Duane 
of New York, as well as by the youngest delegate, John Jay, and thought "almost 
perfect" by Rutledge the younger. Nor were all the Colonies represented in 
this experimental congress, nor the sympathies of all of them secure. Nova 
Scotia, which had been invited to join cause with its fellow-colonists, sent no 
delegate; nor did East and West Florida and Georgia. The stupendous idea 
of trying to stand by force against the hoary government of England shocked 
even the stoutest minds. "We have not men fit for the times," said John 
Adams, "we are deficient in genius, in education, in travel, in fortune, in every- 
thing; I feel unutterable anxiety." Great Britain, fresh from its clustering French 
victories, was at that moment the dictator of the world. Yet the planters of 
America found in their farmer bosoms that simple, uncalculating courage which 
leads to sacrifice and greatness. The modest young Virginia land-owner, 
whose experience of soldiering was gained by service in Braddock's luckless 
expedition against Fort Duquesne, had proposed in his State Convention to 
"raise a thousand men, subsist them at my own expense, and march at their 
head to relieve Boston." And the other hunting 'Squire from Virginia, Patrick 
Henry, himself as eloquent as Washington was laconic, shouted here in 
Carpenters' Hall, "Oppression has effaced the boundaries of the Colonies. I 
am not a Virginian, but an American ! An entire new government must be 
founded." Henry's rich genius, expressing and fixing the best thoughts that were 
in every mind, went far towards creating, here in this plain Hall, the conception 
of America. Day by day, — under the pressing test of this incorigruous meeting, 
— as mind sharpened mind among these travelers from heretofore jarring sections, 
— their councils became more harmonious, and they prepared for union. On the 
iSth of October they adopted, along with the most pathetic appeals to England 
not to force them to a war, those Articles of American Association which really 
were the beginning of our united government. 

All honor go with this sturdy building, the crucible of our union, which closed 
its quiet grasp upon these men from north and south, until their antipathies 
yielded, their hearts beat time together to a common harmony, and they were 
prepared for concert! The valor which made Americans fight for liberty was 
common as the soil, cheap as gold in Ophir, the unregarded inheritance of 
everybody ; it soon swept out from Independence Hall in all its armor, and 
covered the country. But the lesson, far more difficult to the raw young 
land, of mutual forbearance, of feeling for a distant grievance, of working 
together for a plan, was the lesson fostered by Carpenters' Hall. Moderation, 



OLD CITY RELICS. 6i 

that most difficult virtue for inexperience, was the great achievement of the 
First Congress. Moderation was what Lord Chatham praised it for — "solidity 
of reasonine and wisdom of conclusion." Moderation taught it to sfive each 
Colony but a single vote in its own councils — a wonderful measure to carry 
against the pretensions of the richer and more populous commonwealths. Mod- 
eration taueht it to rest the rights of the Colonies on the historical basis rather 
than on the law of nature; by this sagacious resolution the form of mutiny was 
avoided, the odium of war cast on the oppressor, the lessons of English history 
were made to be ours, and the laws which the English commoner has enacted for 
his protection are our own to-day, to study and apply. 

The Congress of 1774 met as aforesaid, with a Virginia chairman (Peyton 
Randolph), a Philadelphia secretary (Charles Thomson), and a provisional chaplain, 
the Rev. Dr. Duche of St. Peter's, whose "first prayer in Congress" was an 
inspired suggestion of one of the representatives. The Congress adjourned on the 
26th of October, and turned the building over to the Carpenters once more. 
Randolph's portrait adorns the room in which he presided, restored to a careful 
likeness of the aspect it wore in its great day. The guild of Carpenters, founded 
in 1724, is still active and respectable after its one hundred and fifty years' 
existence, and numbers ninety members at the present time. The guild-hall is a 
comely building, in perfect preservation, of imported brick, laid in a pattern of 
alternate black and red. Its plan is cruciform, and embraces one room — the 
historic one — fifty by forty feet in size, and lighted by twelve windows ; this is 
open to the public. The edifice stands between Third and Fourth streets, south 
of Chestnut; its inscription commemorates the Toils of War for which "Henry, 
Hancock and Adams inspired the Delegates of the Colonies with Nerve and 
Sinew." 



PENN'S HOUSE. FRIENDS' ALMSHOUSE. FRANKLIN'S GRAVE. 
PHILADELPHIA LIBRARY. 



Market street descends to the river Delaware by one of the steepest grades 
now left to indicate the old hilly configuration of the cit)'. It is a region of great 
warehouses and ugly brick-walled alleys; it is not attractive, except on Sunday, 
when the deserted temples of Mammon resemble a Tadmor in a brick-paved 
wilderness. But in a little court in this remon stands the earliest gubernatorial 
mansion in the State, a house once buried in whispering orchards and trelliscd 



62 



A CENTURY AFTER. 



with o-rape-arbors. The court was named for La;titia, William Penn's hoydenish 

dauo-hter by "sweet Guli Springett;" she was a spirited, self-willed damsel, who 

looked upon the new province in America as an enchanted kingdom, in which she 

should be princess, with a court of gallant explorers around her, and unnumbered 

red-skinned vassals to do her commands. The wild girl used to visit the estates 

of the first planters, and there try with her own little hands to use the flail 

among the threshers — retreating from the unequal competition with tears and 

shame to bury her defeat in the kind bosom of her father. 

To Lcetitia Penn, in 1701, the governor conveyed the ground 

on "High Street," from Front to Second, 175 \ -rv, 

feet deep, with all the "houses, edifices, 

buildings, easements, liberties, profits and _^ll|/3 

commodities." The life in America 

soon palled upon the poor Quaker 

princess. " I cannot prevail on my 

wife to stay, and still less with Tishe" 

wrote Penn to Loo-an, in great straits, 

in 1 701. He was then popularly 

called in Pennsylvania, Loj-d Penn ; " 

the title of "Lord," attached to his name 

in William Bradford's Almanac for 1685, 

was ordered by council to be stricken out, 

and Bradford cautioned not to so offend 

again. When "Tishe" was to go to 

England in 1701, the Friends gave her a 

certificate of good conduct, certifying her to be "sweetly '■~^^===^^^^. 

tempered" and "courteously carriaged," and, according penn's house. 

to Quaker custom when a proposal of matrimony is 

on foot, declared that she was under no marriage engagement in the colony. 

She wedded a brisk merchant, William Aubrey, who quarreled about his 

wife's portion, and would have come with her to Pennsylvania to claim her 

American estate, but that "his wife's regard for the country was at a low 

ebb." Of all the "houses, edifices, and buildings," included in the Laetitia Court 

gift, there remains the nucleus of them all, the governor's house and first American 

residence. It was begun in advance of Penn's earliest visit, by the Lieutenant 

Governor, Colonel Markham. Gabriel Thomas, who went out in the "Welcome," 

said he then saw " the first cellar digfp-incr for the use of our trovernor." It 




OLD CITY RELICS. 



63 



was immediately finished for the proprietary's use, and occupied by Penn in 
1682, while the new city ran up briskly around it. It had an orchard of fruit- 
trees on the Second street side; was open to the water on the east ("facing- 
the harbor," as Penn had stipulated), and had an avenue and great gate on 
Second street, from which "governor's gate," in 1685, the news of Charles II. 's 
death and the proclamation of James II. were solemnly read to the clustering 
townspeople. The low, solid, unboastful structure is an ale-house now, accessible to 
all comers, and reads through all its degradation a w-holesome lesson of candor and 
simplicit)' to the public. Penn's "slate-roof" house, on .Second street, above Walnut, 
was destroyed in 1867; it was a 
more ambitious edifice, not built 
originally for the governor, but 
occupied by him in 1 699 and 1 700 
with his family; here his second 
wife, Hannah Callowhill Penn, 
gave birth to the only member of 
all that prolific family ever born 
on our soil, — "John Penn, the 
American," whose infant cries 
shook the slate-roof in 1699, and 
perhaps vexed the skittish spirits 
of Lsetitia. From it was buried 
Braddock's successor. General 
Forbes, with a military pomp and 
grand ceremony. 

Friends' Almshouse, approached by a court from Walnut street, near Third, 
is the remaining portion of a cluster of wings and tenements begun about 171 3, 
and finished with an edifice fronting on Walnut street in 1729. It was used 
exclusively for indigent quakeresses, and jocularly called the Quaker Nunnery: 
a few "decayed" Friends are still maintained in seclusion and respectability. Its 
interest, to those who have the love of American literature at heart, is largely due 
to the rumor that here the Acadian refugees (who swarmed in Philadelphia on the 
dispersal of the French from Canada) might have been tended, as described in 
Longfellow's poem of "Evangeline." A mere poetic fiction does not demand the 
very gravest adherence of the antiquarian. If not here, the labors of the gende 
French nurse must have been expended at a neighboring edifice, the old City 
Almshouse at Fourth and Spruce. If the "Nunnery" ever did receive male 




FRIE.NDS ALMSHOUSE. 



64 



A CENTURY AFTER. 



^1M 






"mMM^ 







patients, then here might Gabriel be watched by his faithful Evangeline, and in the 
Catholic cemetery at Sixth and Spruce streets must the ill-starred pair have 
been buried. The outline of the narrative is knovi'n to most readers of poetry: 
its earlier form is stated by Mr. James T. Fields as follows : — 

Hawthorne dined one day with Longfellow, and brought with him a friend from 
Salem. After dinner the friend said, " I have been trying to persuade Hawthorne 
-,yC"- to write a story, based upon a legend of Acadie, and still 
current there ; a legend of a girl who, on the dispersion of the 
^^^>^^^^S^ *^fe- Acadians, was separated from her lover, and passed her 
5#'V- life in waitmg and seeking for him, and only found 
^fW^ him dying in a hospital when both were old." Long- 
fellow wondered that this legend did not strike 
the fancy of Hawthorne, and said to him, 
" It you have really made up your mind 
not to use it for a story, will you give 
it to me for a poem ?" To this 
Hawthorne assented, and more- 
over promised not to treat the 
subject in prose till Longfellow 
_lj had seen what he could do with 
it in verse. Hawthorne rejoiced 
Sc: / in the great success of Longfel- 
low, and loved to count up the 
editions, both foreign and Ameri- 
can, of this now world-renowned 
poem. To the visitor at the 
quaint, almost hidden building, 
the form of the olive-skinned, 
gray, Norman woman must be plainer 
to the sight than the mere walls and furniture 
of the Retreat. 




FRANKLIN S GRAVE. 



Franklin's Grave is in the cemetery of Christ Church, at Fifth and Arch 
streets. Beside him lies his faithful Deborah, who in early life forgave him so 
much neglect and married him so trustingly, while in his maturity she made him 
so wise and notable a partner. Her letter describing the furnishing of the new 
house in Franklin Court, in which she addresses him so fondly as "(7 my child !" 
gives a perfect picture of this lady's practical and housewifely character. "Your 



FR A NK L/N'S GRA VE. 65 

time-piece stands in one corner, which is, as I am told, 'all wrong.' In the north 
room where we sit we have a small Scotch carpet, the small book-case, brother 
John's picture, and one of the King and Queen. The room we call yours has 
in it a desk—the harmonica made like a desk ; * '•' * the pictures are not 
put up, as I do not like to drive nails. I have taken all the dead letters" — (the 
first postmaster's modest pile of dead letters,) "and had them boxed and barreled 
up." She concludes with the familiar expression of "my child," and exclaims, 
" there is a great odds between a man's being at home and abroad !" The 
gravestone is a flat slab, near the street, at which point an opening has been 
made in the wall for the convenience of spectators : the inscription is of the 
simplest kind, and only in books are to be seen the epigrammatic words which 
Franklin devised for himself, expressing his belief in immortality, and faith in his 
"Authour:" 

The body of 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, Printer, 
(like the cover of an old book, its contents torn, and 
stripped of its lettering and gilding) 
lies here food for worms. 
Yet the work itself shall not be lost, but will (as he be- 
lieved) appear once more 

in a new 

and more beautiful edition, 

corrected and amended 

by 

THE AUTHOUR. 



The statue of Franklin, by Lazzarini an Italian sculptor, the gift of Mr. 
Bingham, stands in a niche in the front of the Philadelphia Library, at the 
corner of Fifth and Library streets, and the edifice is often popularly called the 
Franklin Library. " When Franklin hears the State-House clock strike twelve, 
he always nods his head," proverb-loving old men say to their grandchildren. 
The Library Company of Philadelphia, whose collection of 101,000 books is 
sheltered in this old building, was founded in 1731. The kernel of the whole 
catalogue is the Loganian Library ; James Logan, the first Secretary of 
Pennsylvania, gave his collection of 2000 volumes to the city, and the "Loganian" 
books are still shown to all comers without restriction, according to the provisions 
of his will. 

The Philadelphia Library possesses a great many rare and curious works; 
a foretaste of its riches may be had from the central case in the first room, wherein 



66 



A CEN7 UR Y A F TER. 



a good many 
fi valuable manu- 
scripts are 
shown under 
glass. Curiosi- 
ties, relics, and 
mementos occu- 
py its somewhat 
■d0^\ tlingy recesses, 
;| and in its laby- 
rinthine alcoves 
and cloisters 
may be seen the 
poring students, 
consulting refer- 
ences, ferreting 
authorities, and 
tracingf out evidence with all the ardor of the book- 
worm. 

A valuable legacy, hampered with conditions, was 
made a short time ago to the library by Dr. Rush: the executors of his will are 
erecting, by his order, a splendid library edifice on South Broad street, to be 
proffered to the Library Company when completed. Acceptance of the gift will, 
accordingly, mean a removal from the time-honored site opposite Independence 
Square. 





THE RESORTS OF PH I LAD ELPH I ANS. 



ATLANTIC CITY. 



A -SUMMER suburb of Philadelphia, where the ocean provides all the business 
and entertainment, is Atlantic City, — a timber capital laid out on the sea- 
beach at the nearest convenient point across the peninsula of New Jersey. The 
metropolis of Penn claims, indeed, to be a port city, using in that sense the mile- 
wide channel and broader bay of the Delaware ; but the Commonwealth has no 
actual sea-front, and to reach the Atlantic the inhabitants must borrow for a 
bridge the whole span of the adjacent State. The transit hardly occupies two 
hours. Citizens regard the ocean as their "countrj^-place," leasing or building 
cottaofes along- the beach, and visitinor their families there daily in the hot term, 
with no more interruption to business than would occur if their villas were fixed 
in some eligible spot in the rural interior. There are pleasant Woodruff parlor- 
cars attached to the expresses, and the merchant has hardly time to satisfy 
himself that there is nothing in the evening paper, when he is bowled smoothly to 
the immediate vicinity of his summer cottage. The streets of pretty buildings which 
form a wooden chess-board beside the sea are fresh and coquettish. The town is but 
twenty years old; and, besides, the sandy soil and absence of rock-foundation preclude 
the attempt at ponderous stone villas. It is to a seriously-built city what a lady's 
July muslins are to her more deliberate and awe-inspiring toilets of the winter. The 
jaunty little town is bright with every pearly tint that a painter can extract from his 
paint-pot; it is trimmed around the balconies with fantastic frills of scroll-sawing, 
or jutting timbers carved like a Russian peasant's roof-tree, or sham-Gothic 
capitals that perk themselves up in a propitiatory way and ask, "Wouldn't you 
take me for real stone if I were sanded ?" It is roofed with shingles, cut and 
stained to look like slate, with saucy mansards, little towers that would be taken 
for chimneys, and fanciful pignons just able to support their weather-vanes. 
Every house in Atlantic City is some man's castle, doubtless; but some of the 
castles would not stand a very long siege. These fretwork strongholds vary in 
size ; some are .so small that you are tempted to put them on the centre-table, like 
the carved cottages from Switzerland ; while others, the public-houses, are so big 
that with their balconies stripped off )ou would declare they were factories. The 
hotels, indeed, are rather gigantic; but they run into length, not Iieight, and look 



68 



A CENTURY AFTER. 




PACIFIC AVENUE. 



like ordinal"}' tall buildings that had been advised to lie down on their sides 
and grow; even so did the giant Gargantua, "as quickly as he had banqueted, 
stretch himself out on a good bench and go to sleep, without evil thinking or 
evil speaking." The United States, the Sea-View House, and Schaufler' s are repre- 
sentative hotels, devoted respectively to the fashionable, the democratic, and the 
Teutonic elements of our civilization. Besides these large representative inns 
there are a dozen prominent hotels of more or less importance, and about a 
hundred boarding-houses, an abundance of houses for temporary hire, and, added 
to these mercenary accommodations, the dignified privacy of rich men's homes. 
Such varied buildings, with the churches, compose the town. The element that 
is missed, and whose absence leaves visible the agreeable picture of a city entirely 
given up to pleasure, is the work-day element. The sea-side city differs from the 
commercial city in having no gloomy warehouses, no storage-houses devoted to 
trade, no soiled pavements vexed with thundering drays, no hot factories giddy 
with steam and belted wheels, no counting-houses peopled with big books and 
pale clerks — in short, none of the curse laid on fallen Adam. The wharf of this 
town is not crowded with heav)' merchandise, but strewn with sand, tracked with 
pleasure-carriages, and trodden by people intent on idleness alone. It is pleasant 



ATLANTIC CJTY. 69 

to see occasionally a happy village devoted to nothing but recreation. Every 
house in the place assists in the impression, joins the conspiracy, puts on its 
liveliest paint and prettiest ornaments, and pretends at least to be comfortable 
and cheerful. 

The dried white sand blows up from the beach, banks itself in some of the 
porticoes like snow, spreads over the pavements, and runs races in the wind under 
your feet; the corner curb-stone is hidden under a pile of it to-day, to be blown 
clean to-morrow. A curled ribbon of sea-weed is wrapped around the front pillar 
like the sea-weed that clings to the palaces of Venice. In a town which the 
ocean constantly dresses out with its sands and shells and foliagre it seems as if 

" o 

the precautions of common civic life were a joke. The policemen in uniform 
who pace these marine streets and guard the doors, hardly appear as if they 
expected to be taken seriously ; the street-cars, rolling on tracks gritty with sand 
that lately paved the ocean, seem like a pretense ; the rows of street-lamps that 
twinkle at night might be expected to fade suddenly, like a mirage. But the 
police and cars and lights go on with their business as gravely as in "real" 
cities. 

The beach is laid with a footway of heavy plank, on which the promenading, 
and most of the flirting, is done. Every afternoon, for two miles, it is thickly 
peopled with citizens on dress-parade. The usual Chestnut street promenade of 
Philadelphia has long been famous as one of the most beautiful sights of that big 
brick Babylon. The Philadelphia girl, say the natives, with every appearance of 
belief, is not only the fairest of the continent, but she knows how to walk with 
ease, self-possession, and simplicity, without consciousness of notice, and without 
efforts to attract it. The Philadelphia male, say the same disinterested critics, is the 
only citizen of the Northern States who can walk the street as if the pavement did 
not burn his feet, and who does not seem rushino- to some business encrasfement with 
the speed of despair. These citizens, it is claimed, besides their good looks, have 
the art of lounging gracefully, and pacing as if they could afford to do it. Not- 
withstanding the great increase in the number of equipages of late years — since 
the possession of a suitable driving-ground has made the ownership of carriages 
almost indispensable — the Philadelphians are a city of walkers; the prosperous 
people still turn out, and show ihcir more contented faces among the crowds 
that fill the pavements; the promenade is not, as elsewhere, merely a concourse 
of business men making parade of their misery, or of women care-worn, shopping, 
hardened, tired, or painted. It is a procession that includes the "best persons." 
It is what Paris would recognize as one of her own boulevards of Jldtieurs. 



7° 



A CENTURY AFTER. 




Now the pretty 
wooden boulevard at 
Atlantic City shows the 
same procession, almost 
as identical as if just 
poured upon it from the 
original decanter. It is 
an extension of Chestnut 
street. The reader has 
only to look out for a 
recognition of the same 
fair faces, with the em- 
bellishment of greater 
happiness and more 
studied idleness, and 
with the last traces of 
aj care quite smoothed 

D 

2 away. 

z To the delights of 

S: bathine are added the 
sports of crab-fishing at 
the "Thoroughfare," near 
the railroad bridge, and 
of sailing and fishing in 
the boats kept for hire 
at the "Inlet," which 
crosses the beach beside 
the light-house: these 
diversions give rise to 
incessant jokes, a little 
sea-sickness, and endless 
adventures. 

The reader probably 
knows the routine at 
an American bathing- 
city, from the average of 
which this does not par- 



ATLANTIC CITY. 71 

ticularly differ. About mid-morning, with certain variations for the tide, the 
sojourners prepare to bathe. Little toilet-houses stud the beach, the hotels 
possessing long lines of them, and the private residences having individual boxes 
of their own in particular points on the nearest spot opposite their street. In 
one of these wardrobe-cases Brother Jonathan struggles into his flannel suit, and 
emerges when in full rig, feeling like a circus-performer in his novel uniform; he 
meets by appointment his favored maid, or his daughter or wife, who is hardly 
recognizable with her Bloomer suit of braided cloth, but who still tries to look 
jaunty, in her ruffled and belted frock, while a scared-looking chip hat conceals 
her hair, and moccasins, small as if made for an Indian baby, her feet. Brother 
Jonathan chooses for his partner the place adapted to her wishes, holds her hands 
firmly as the billow rolls over them, and assists her to regain her footing, making- 
it a matter of pride not to lose his own. When the sea determines to play off 
its tricks, and sends some tenth or eleventh billow more powerful than the rest, 
it is his business to recover his balance first, fish around boldly in the water for 
his wrecked companion, ingeniously recognize her by some emerging ribbon or 
shoe, or other lifted signal of distress, and swim oft to any reasonable distance 
for her hat. Having tucked up her hair for her, hung her over his arm a minute 
to let the salt water run out from her mouth, and planted her on her feet, with 
a polite assurance that she looks fresher from her dip and that drowning is 
becoming to her, he assists her to further immersions, or teaches her to float and to 
swim. The bath over, he retires to his wardrobe-room again, where he goes through 
struggles like those of a confined Medium to force his damp person into his 
clothes once more. Then, rejoining his rosy mate, he waits on her to the hotel, 
confers a sandwich upon her, and leaves her till the next meeting, at dinner-time, 
or at the evening hop. 

The frequenters of Atlantic City are inveterate bathers. The ocean is not a 
mere excuse or pretense; they seek it to make its most intimate acquaintance. 
Almost everybody repairs to the water at about eleven o'clock. Many of the 
gentlemen have already tested the billows, in the privileged swimming-bath, 
without the inconvenience of flannel, at sunrise. Another large party bathe in 
the afternoon; in the evening, amid all the stir of fashion on the beach, amid 
the promenading and fine toilets and stj'lish driving, the sea still receives its 
bathers with decorum and gentleness, lifting its waves high around them in a 
privacy of foam. 

For every taste and every guest, the salt tub is ready, receiving countless 
relays of incumbents with the same refreshing welcome. 



72 



A CENTURY AFTER. 



The air of Atlantic City has been compared with that of Nice. There is 
nothing perceptibly acrid or sharp or saline about it; it is but rarely laden with 
fog. The action of the sun upon such a breadth of flat country as here leads 
up to the beach produces an equalizing and temperate effect, absorbing the 
moisture as quickly as it rises, and resulting in a rich, dry climate like that of 
favored regions far inland. For this reason this resort is known far and wide as 
the dry sea-side par excelletice, and is unhesitatingly recommended by the doctors 
to invalids who may even be suffering from bronchial complaints. 

The finest sight of Atlantic City, morally speaking, is not her grandest hotel 
or most elegant equipage — not the tower of her beacon, the regularity of her 
ten-mile beach, or even the majesty of her ocean. It is the charity of her 
Nursery for the children of the poor. This establishment was the first of its kind 
in the country, and was due to the healthful imagination of certain wealthy gentlemen 
of Philadelphia (or, shall we conjecture, of their wives?) who fancied that a sight 
of the Atlantic and the sports of the shore would be a good regimen for the 
invalid offspring of the indigent. The charity was opened with the best results. Here 
all summer long, to the number of fifty or sixty at a time, the little sick urchins 
from the poor man's home are brought to breathe the pure air and enjoy the 
limitless space, and to play fearlessly with the monstrous ocean. Hundreds of 
frail little lives are probably saved by this means every summer, and the good 
example of a sea-side children's home is being imitated, only too tardily, at other 
resorts. 




CHILDREN S HOME. 




CAPE MAY. 



FROM time immemorial the citizens of Philadelphia have made their bathing- 
place of the Atlantic near the mouth of the Delaware River, — resorting to 
Cape May as the wealthy Romans used to resort to Balse and Capri. To reach 
the spot they were at first obliged to overcome all the inconveniences of bad 
roads and primitive boating facilities, until the invention of Robert Fulton and 
Oliver Evans gave them the power of reaching the spot with the speed of steam. 
In about three hours by locomotive, or in nine hours by steamer, they can now 
follow the axis-line of the long State of New Jersey, and arrive without fatigue 
at its southern extremity. Here the powerful surf of the Atlantic rolls upon the 
extremity of the peninsula, or drives tlie fresh water before it up the broad 
channel of Delaware Bay. ., 

The curious feature of the litde city of Cape l\Iay is that it combines the 
fashionable watering-place with the rude provincial settlement. From the early 
part of the present century it commenced to grow, as an humble aggregation 
of rustic houses and marine shops, where the fishermen and harvesters of the 
neighboring inlets might come to sell their produce, visit the doctor, or leave 
their sunburnt children at the school, or gather for worship in the low-roofed 
church. The primitive buildings of this state of civilization still remain, covering 
a large flat area that stretches back from the sea, and sheltering a permanent 
village population of fifteen hundred souls ; but this rude maritime settlement 
is now everywhere overshadowed and pierced by gorgeous modern structures, 
that lift their ornamental fronts among the weather-stained walls, and make a 



74 A CEXTURY AFTER. 

contrast like "cloth of gold matched with cloth of frieze." The ambitious hotels 
have usurped the whole sea-front. The street-corners are occupied by fanciful 
shops for the sale of stj'lish trifles. Splendid equipages with liveried drivers 
dash between the rude antique houses. Modern villas of fanciful device are 
steadily pushing down the boatmen's cottages and the humble country stores. 

All through the winter and spring this aristocratic element is fast asleep. The 
monstrous hotels are as lifeless as the temples of Palmyra, — their carpets are 
stripped from the floors and hung, to prevent moulding, in festoons over the 
stair-railings; in the centre of the parlor floors, where the figures of the dance 
are wont to be woven, are mountains of chairs; vast heaps of crockery are 
built upon tables in the dining-halls, and the pantries are piled with transparent 
structures of chandelier-globes, goblets, fruit-dishes in dozens, and salt-cellars in 
hundreds. Only the steps of a solitary watchman echo from time to time 
through the corridors, to prove that the lethargy is only sleep, not death. At 
the same time the private cottages stretch along the streets in long, inanimate 
rows, like the backbones of extinct monsters stranded by the sea, and emptied 
of the nerve and marrow that gave them purpose and energy in the battle of 
life. During these months the original and natural life of Cape May creeps 
timidly into notice. The rustic shops are visited by half-idle farmers, buying 
saddles, ax-handles, bags, or stoneware for the toiling wives at home. The 
village respectables come out and exchange modest visits, — the schoolmaster 
and his wife calling upon Mr. and Mrs. Editor, the boat-builder and carpenter 
discussing the price of timber, and the clergyman receiving timid calls from the 
old maids and widows of the place. As spring opens, a new wave of animation 
steals over the village, prophetic of the great change that the warm weather is 
to bring. Truck gardens are manured with sea-weed and crushed crab-shells. 
The eggs of the horseshoe crab are collected in great quantities to feed whole 
aviaries of " spring chickens," — accounting for the strange, sea-like flavor that 
city guests will presently notice and wonder at in those India-rubbery fowls. As 
June progresses, the farmers in the vicinity paint their boats, the fishermen 
grease their wagons — for in this amphibious region the yeomen are sailors, the 
sailors yeomen, and the distinction between sea-faring and land-culture is merged 
in a pleasant confusion. Old nags — their coats as furry and salty as those of 
Neptune's sea-horses — are clipped, curried, and made presentable; the father 
mends up the old harness with home-learnt skill, and rubs with oil the cracking 
cover of the dearborn; the son buys a box of paper collars; the gingham-gowned 
daughter pays additional visits to the barnyard, feeds the hens with a novel 



CAFE MAY. 



prodigality that as- 
tonislies those mild 
pensioners, and, like 
the immemorial girl 
of the fable, counts 
by scores and hun- 
dreds of dozens the 
fortune-brincrinor 
eggs that are not 
hatched, and may 
never be. If the 
summer's business 
turns out well, the 
girl will come out 
with money for sev- 
eral new dresses, 
and the boy, after 
driving city belles ^ 
all July and August, ^ 
will be ready to > 
marry a countr)- one * 
in September. 

With the advan- 
cing season come 
certain sis^ns that in- 
dicate to the citizen 
that July is at hand. 
The amphibious 
farmer of Cape May 
begins to prepare 
for his crops. His 
harvest is the rich 
citizen. "John," he 
says to his son, "drop 
the oysters in brack- 
ish water in the inlet 
yonder, and take 




A CENTURY AFTER. 




COLUMBIA AVENUE. 



care you let them fall hinge down. Give them as much water to drink as 
they see fit." That is the easy way in which the Cape May caterer feeds his 
bivalves for the inevitable oyster-stew of supper-time. A lean oyster, dropped 
properly into the liquid mud of the channels, where the soft water overflows 
him, will become firm and fat in a single night. "Ben and Tom," continues the 
purveyor, "you must put the wheels on to the old wagon, and prepare to scoop 
me up a couple of bushels of soft crabs every day while the season lasts." At 
the same time, the old man knows that he has a sure and liberal market secured 
for all the fine hay he has reaped from the salt meadow, for the Indian corn and 
tomatoes he has planted in his garden-patch, for the yield of the potato-acre, and 
for the calves and pigs whose infant graces are ripening behind the barn. 

Thus, when the season fairly arrives, every member of the farmer's family is 
thrown out, like a tentacle, to suck in wealth and gain ; ever)^ article of value in his 
possession is utilized, his goods are hired, his industry is directed to the same 
end, and the city man who employs the rough, freckled countryman to drive him 
for his pleasure, hardly feels the truth, that this homely rustic may be prepared, 
with the result of his accumulated savings, to buy him out ten times over. 

At the hotels, for a month before the earliest and hardiest city visitor appears, 
there are carpenters hammering, painters hanging like spiders from the eaves of 



CAPE MA Y. 77 

lofty hotels, upholsterers stretching carpets, plumbers and gas-fitters darkly burying 
miles of pipe inside of solid walls. Then, on the eve of the opening-day, regiments 
of exiled and melancholy cooks come down by the train, with their white caps 
folded up inside their French chests ; whole choruses of negro waiters arrive, 
chattering and whistling ; silent, stout men wander into the village with little 
caskets containing violins or oboes. Finally, the dazzling hotel clerk assumes 
his sweet smile and fixes himself like a jewel at the desk, and the season is 
opened. 

Cape May is inferior to Newport in the solidity of its buildings, but, with that 
exception, is, perhaps, the most substantial looking of our sea-side resorts. The 
finest hotels are more solid and ornamental, for example, than the finest of 
Long Branch. The Stockton House and Congress Hall are summer palaces 
that easily vie with the most splendid at Saratoga. Besides these, there are 
the Columbia, Atlantic, Sea-Breeze, United States, and Ocean Houses — each 
of them the favorite with certain classes and families, who loudly cry up their 
chosen resting-places. During the months of July and August the town literally 
becomes a Philadelphia-on-the-Sea ; the visitors are old Philadelphia neighbors, 
who greet each other as they drive on the beach as they have habitually greeted 
each other in driving through Fairmount Park. The hotel parlors are filled 
with old acquaintances, glad to meet again after brief separation. The balls 
and "Germans" of the winter months are imitated in the "hops," and largely 
patronized by the same class of people. And beside the tender encounters and 
formal recognition of the ball-room floor, there is the immense common-room of 
the ocean, where beaus and belles, in marine costumes, meet without the 
possibility of formality or haughtiness. 

The bathing at Cape May is so perfect, that visitors habituated to it are 
apt to look with contempt upon any other beach they may try. The surf is 
mathematically regular, and just high enough for pleasure. A good bather 
can take the outermost and loftiest roller, while the more timid can arrange 
themselves along the graduated waves that fall in towards the shore in musical 
diminuendo. The even sand-beach stretches for an indefinite distance out under 
water, with a safe and accurate slope, over which the advancing tide is scored 
into breakers with the regularity of clock-work. There is a broad and smooth 
pavement of sand left by the retreating surf, on which promenaders may walk 
with comfort and luxury, while carriages can bowl smoothly upon it as on an 
idealized Macadam, or equestrians may pace with the spent waves washing over 
their horses' feet. This superb natural road extends from Poverty Beach, a 



78 A CENTURY AFTER. 

desolate part of the coast eastward from Cape May, about ten miles to Diamond 
Beach, a locality reached after rounding the southern point of New Jersey and 
passing- up along the side of Delaware Bay. The latter beach is named from 
the abundance of pebbles forming the shore, many specimens of which, being of 
rock-crystal, may be polished into the semblance of precious stones. 

The regular life of Cape May — we speak now of the habitual existence of 
old habitues, not of the visits of the fashionable moths who flutter down for a 
day or two — is a delicious, lazy round of exercise and pleasure, calculated to 
tone the nerves and brace the system for winter work. Breakfasting about 
eight, the guests devote the after-breakfast hour to reading the morning papers, 
discussing the news and their matutinal cigar, demolishing ten-pins in the alleys, 
and thinking about the crisp bath that is to come. About ii A. M. the rows of 
uniform wooden cabins that strew the beach in front of the principal hotels, and 
the more commodious ones erected by private cottagers, begin to give birth to a 
tribe of strangely-dressed creatures, who meet and advance to the water hand in 
hand ; these are the ladies and o-entlemen whose fine skirts and fanciful canes 
have lashed the porticoes of the hotels in the earlier part of the morning. Now, 
covered with gypsy hats and flannel suits, they look like mad people from an 
asylum. When refreshed by the bath, they emerge, dress, lunch, and lose 
themselves in a delicious nap until dinner-time — the men being usually guilty 
of another cigar at this period, whose smoke melts languidly off into the dreams 
of their siesta — the ladies spreading the pillows with their hair, which dries as 
they sleep, themselves looking the while like mermaids strewing their tresses 
over rocks of marble. Dinner is taken at an hour early enough to permit a 
drive in the pleasant late part of the afternoon. At five the approaches to the 
hotels are thick with the carriages, either brought to order or hopeful of an 
engagement. About sunset the roads are covered with the world of Cape May, 
whirling in all directions to enjoy the prospect and the afternoon sea-breeze. 
The beach is dressed for a great distance with a firmly-bedded artificial road, 
forming a fine boulevard, upon which the splendid equipages can display themselves 
to the best possible advantage. Back in the country the roads have of late 
years been much improved and laid out anew in various directions, forming 
agreeable drives through a peculiar and impressive, though flat and wild, country. 
The best material at hand for dressing these roads is the oyster-shell, which is 
laid by many a ton upon the level turnpikes around Cape May. The New 
Jersey farmer believes in nothing but what he calls a "good, old-fashioned, shell 
road," packed with the hard envelopes of oysters that are killed in cold blood. 



ACADEMY OF MUSIC. 




ENTRANXE TO ACADEMY. 



<'TT is such a luxur)'," said Ronconi the opera- 
singer, " to throw out the voice in the Philadel- 
^P phia Academy!" This fine building, this- triumph of 
acoustic accommodations, is situated at Broad and Locust streets, and the grand 
ball which marked its opening took place in 1857. It is of dark brick and stone, 
in the Italianized Byzantine st)'le, so common for all our large edifices that are 
not churches ; the architects were Le Brun and Runge. Besides its delicious 
nursing quality for the voice, this is in advance of most opera-houses in the 
world for interior beauty and dimensions. The stage, framed with twin pairs 
of enormous and graceful Corinthian pillars, upon which Bailly's colossal c&ry- 
atides support the arches, is singularly effective : as a stage, again, it is 

uncommonly commodious, distancing nearly all the theatrical stages of Europe in 

79 



8o A CENTURY AFTER. 

dimensions. The auditorium, ninety feet wide, is one hundred and two and a 
half feet deep; that of La Scala in Milan, and that of San Carlo in Naples 
alone are somewhat larger. The allegorical paintings on the ceiling by Schmolze 
are real works of art. It seats twenty-nine hundred persons, the average of 
European theatres only containing places for two thousand. 

The musical taste of Philadelphia is a rather singular union of profundity and 
naivete. Observers at a distance, — especially professional observers, — not holding 
the clew, have often wondered at the fact that certain famous vocalists have 
appeared there with the most delirious success, drawing the quiet inhabitants out of 
their houses in hordes, while others equally famous, or very nearly so, have sung 
to empty benches, and presently have had to pack up their stage-wardrobes and 
decamp in fury and despair. The peculiarity is not an unwholesome one, and 
depends on the condition of public and private criticism in the cit}^ The press 
critics are in several instances persons of the highest competence, enthusiastic 
lovers of the art, and, as auditors, fastidious and instructed in a high degree. The 
towns-people include many connoisseurs similarly "advanced" and educated. 
There is in both departments the greatest intelligence of independent judgment, 
with the least imaginable tendency to clannishness. All this leads to a state of 
things that is the despair of the impressario. The population is a fixed one — 
not a changing collection of visitors indulgent towards any novelty. The situation 
is quite different from that at London, or Paris, or Berlin, or Munich, or Milan. 
In any great city of fluctuating population the maintenance of musical recreation is 
a constant and recognized necessity; the professional critics of such capitals always 
acquire a particular tone of urbanity and catholicity — a tolerance not necessarily 
venal, but extremely broad. The star performers visit such places in turn, and 
are received by the press, if they have any sort of desert, with an easy and 
rather cynical approbation, which is certain to be seconded by the support of 
some fraction of the changing population. In this way respectable mediocrity 
has the chance of a very fair temporary success. But let respectable mediocrity 
set her face before the audience composed of resident amateurs, and in the glare 
of a press filled with virtuosos, — she had better set it in the jaws of a lion. A 
chilling disdain, worse than a storm of hisses, emanates from the crowd in the 
auditorium, who let the initial test-performance drag itself through in freezing 
decorum, and studiously absent themselves thereafter. Why should people leave 
such comfortable homes as those of Philadelphia for any performer that is not an 
absolute star? The audiences here are, at first view, the representative or ideal 
audiences, whom the blandishments of inflated incompetency connot beguile, and 



ACADEMY OF M US I C. 




VESTIBULE OF THE ACADEMY. 



whose judgment is re-enforced by die opinion of cultured cridcs in the daily papers. 
But a litde consideration will show that this very independence of opinion is 
perilous to the business success of the art, and that without business success no 
art can stand in this world. Your newspaper cridc, if he happens to be a virtuoso, 
with his own piano-pardes in full blast through the winter, is liable to lack in 
catholicity as much as he is able to furnish in knowledge; this sort of critic has 
his uncontrollable hatred of Bellini, or his fond recollections of Sphor, or his 
private adoradon of Wagner. His public criticisms art; fashioned upon some 



82 • A CENTURY AFTER. 

special theory of what is excellent in art, rather than upon the standards that an 
indulgent world has determined to accept. Printed criticism of this sort is sure 
to display the most startling incongruities. The "free lance" is found rushing 
forward to attack, on the sudden, some performer with a world-wide fame, or 
unexpectedly rising to champion a third-rate artist who does not show the faults 
of its own particular dislike. Thus the support of musical art is rather capricious, 
just because it is not ignorant. It is not to be relied on for charity towards a 
rising talent, and it is almost as contemptuous as the red Indians towards declining 
age. Tamberlik, Mario, have had bitter hours in Philadelphia; and when it came 
to such faded voices as those of Schillag and Di Murska, the opposition was merciless 
and final. At the same time, a public of this sort will have its own favorites, 
whom it will support long after their power to excel is really gone, simply because 
it has marked and approved them in earlier days. Nothing can match the fidelity 
of an audience composed forever of the same virtuosos: when it has stamped a 
favorite, it abides by that favorite till death. Thus Brignoli, loved when his tenor 
was fresh and strong, might bring his rusty throat here to-morrow with the 
certainty of support. He belongs, in the minds of the Philadelphians, to the famous 
day when the Academy was new, and they discovered that they were an opera- 
supporting community. 

The opening of the grand opera-house was made brilliant by the glorious 
tones of Gazzaniga, who eighteen years ago was a novelty in this country, and 
whose admirable method, still effective in teaching, was then supported by the 
charms of beauty and liveliness. Artists painted her as the Traviata, and her bust 
still decorates the halls of the grateful Academy she opened. It was a pleasant 
season, the first at the gigantic opera-house. The building was not only big, but 
abundantly decorated and furnished; there was nothing barn-like in its huge 
dimensions; the upholstery and walls, of a judicious shade of crimson, relieved 
the white-and-gold rainbows of the successive tiers. The vast opening of the 
stage, with its noble frame of doubled pillars and caryatid figures, was filled 
in with a crimson "first drop," so illusively painted with velvet festoons by J. R. 
Martin, of Berlin, that the curtain of Xeuxis could hardly have been more 
deceptive. When this rolled up, the unparalleled dimensions of the stage were 
found full of the richest scenery and furniture, amongst which the thread of 
the dramatic story and the embroideries of the music were gradually developed. 
The audience, on the other side of the footlights, was brilliant and proud — a 
complication, in fact, of social "circles," each circle knowing intimately its own 
"set," but ignorant as the grave of the people in the circle just outside of it. 



ACADEMY O !■■ MUSIC. 




FOYER OF THE ACAIJEMY. 



The first six orchestra rows, according to the terms of the subscriptions, were 
occupied by the stockholders; the purchase of stock giving a lasting right to the 
occupancy of one of these favored seats. It was a splendid privilege, and held 
very cheap at the money, that of being allowed to sit in one of these marked 
fauteuils, under the eyes of the whole house, and in full blaze of the sun-like 
chandelier. Every man of means was eager to become the owner of stock, and 
by this easy method proclaim himself, in the most obvious manner, as a member 
of the republican aristocracy. It was not so great a joy, however, to the managers, 
who rebelled not a litde at having to give up the best seats in the house to a 
throng of well-dressed persons who added nothing to the receipts of the 
performance, and simply reposed on their right of pre-emption. 



84 A CENTURY AFTER. 

The whole plan of the building met with general approval. The lofty and 
handsome foyer, the broad staircases, furnishing such abundant means of exit, the 
corridors for circulation outside the tiers, all were naturally admired, and have not 
yet been matched on this continent. The edifice is as large as the limitations of 
acoustics will permit, and is unexcelled for the virtue of gathering up the 
sounds emitted from the stage and delivering them in perfection to the hearers. 
The latter are served by every convenience. There can be no better house for 
getting about in, or for getting out of Even the amphitheatre is accessible 
and pleasant, and in the family circle below, a certain set of artists have formed 
the habit of eoinsf with their wives and children, creatine a little social salon in 
that less aristocratic retreat, and carrying thither some of the best-educated ears 
and most cultivated musical memories to be found anywhere. 

The history of the Academy has not been uneventful. Citizens remember the 
enormous crowd which filled the buildinof on the occasion of the Prince of Wales 
visiting this country, when, in addition to the rush for good places, a number of 
influential dandies got upon the stage as supernumeraries ; the ladies in their 
stalls, and Patti, and perhaps Royal Highness itself, were then not a little 
amazed at the sight of enormous opera-glasses, carried down to the footlights in 
the hands of the stage soldier, and very coolly directed into the boxes from 
that advantageous position. The poor "captain of supernumeraries" got a terrible 
blowing-up ; but the offending individuals had argued that, if a cat may look at 
a king, a puppy may look at a prince, and departed very well contented with 
themselves. 

Italian opera has flourished on this stage whenever it was well presented, 
and the performers capable ; mediocre exhibitions have been a little too severely 
punished. At this Academy, as has been intimated, it is either a rousing success 
or a flat failure, and a comfortable, good-natured support of second-class merit 
is almost unknown. German opera has been well sustained, since the pleasant time 
when Bertha Johansen showed the towns-people her fine interpretation of Fidelia: 
the opera of that name had a great run, with performance of all the various 
overtures. Mme. Rotter, who made such a graceful soubrette in Fidelia, made a 
good soubrette too in the pre77ziere part in Fra Diavolo, where her jolly and 
innocent style was highly appreciated. In this opera Herr Habelmann, then young 
and handsome, rolled over the rocks so conscientiously as the dying brigand, 
that he broke an arm ; the pile of rock-work, owing to the exceptional height 
of the stage, yielding him a fall of greater altitude than ever tenor had on the 
boards of a theatre before. 



ACADEMY OF MUSIC. 




ACADEMY OF MUSIC — INTERIOR. 



Adalina Patti, now too long a stranger to the American boards, has frequently 
sung in the Academy; the operas in which she is best remembered being those 
invariable selections of young beginners, the "Sonnambula" and "Lucia." Her 
career began in this city, where her first efforts, as infant phenomenon and child- 
violinist, are curiously recollected by play-goers. Her sister, Carlotta, has often 
filled the great dome with her superb singing in " The Magic Flute." One of 



86 A CENTURY- AFTER. 

the most creditable feats of this institution, and one justifying its claim to be 
called an Academy, was its production of "Notre Uame," the opera written by 
Mr. Fry, a Philadelphian, and the principal composer America has yet produced. 
The opera, however, fell flat, though an excellent representation of Oiiasimodo 
was given by Mr. Seguin, and a fine combination of scenery and spectacular 
effect covered the stage ; the lack of a competent prima-donna — an old want 
whenever English opera has been concerned — was fatal to the success of the 
work. 

The history of the stage in this cit)' of the Quakers is more brilliant than 
might be expected. Notwithstanding the most determined opposition, a dramatic 
show was opened by Kean and Murray, in 1 749, forty-three years before the 
Puritans of Boston made up their reluctant minds to permit the exhibition of rope- 
dancing "as a moral lecture," in 1792. Nicholas Rowe was the first dramatic 
author regularly represented in Philadelphia by a full company. "The Fair 
Penitent" was played by a set of actors from England, under Lewis Hallam, in 
the large room over William Plumstead's storehouse, on the east side of Water 
street, at the corner of the first alley below Pine. The first actual theatre was 
built in 1759, on Society Hill, at the south-west corner of South and Vernon 
streets. David Douglass and his wife. Miss Cheer and Miss Morris displayed 
the unaccustomed spectacle of towering wigs, glass jewelry and red heels to the 
innocent city bloods, whose most daring costumes till then were guiltless of false 
pretense and tinsel. The next year, 1760, Douglass built and equipped his long- 
famous "South Street Theatre," a structure Avhich lasted until 1800. This was 
the scene of the Capuan revels of Howe and his army when they occupied the 
American capital during the revolutionary war. The officers opened the theatre 
with a theatrical company under their jDatronage, the more talented among them 
displaying with pride their own skill in acting or in decorating the stage. Here 
poor young Andre fluttered away the last months of his promising but vain life, 
devising pageants, leading the revels, and lending his artistic talent with brilliant 
effect to the production of the plays. The Major, together with a Captain 
Delancy, were the chief scene-painters of the British play-house during the brief 
irony of its splendor. A drop-curtain painted by Major Andre continued to be 
used habitually, for )-ears after the theatre had turned national again — as long, 
in fact, as the house stood. 

In 1792 occurred a split between the members of a large and conspicuous 
dramatic company, whose appearances were made sometimes in Philadelphia and 
sometimes in New York. A capable tragedian, Thomas Wignell, with Mr. and 



ACADEMY OF MUSIC. 




ACADL.M\ UK .MLSIC— EXTERKIK. 



Mrs. Morris, seceded, and set up his own company, the attraction being Mrs. 
Morris, a tall beauty on very high heels, whose charm was in her looks rather 
than in her art. Of this company Mr. Dunlap, the historian of the stage, says, 
that it flourished for many years, more uniformly, and with actors of higher 
estimation, than the rival company of New York, conducted by John Henr)^ 

A determined opposition to the drama was still maintained in the post- 
Revolutionary period on the part of a goodly number of excellent people, who 
regarded theatre-going as a form of amusement especially demoralizing to the 
young, and who consequently discountenanced it, even to the extent of asking 
legislative interference with the players. Within a decade of the signing of the 
Declaration of Independence, an animated debate on the subject of suppressing 
the theatres took place in the Legislature of Pennsylvania, and the law-makers of 
the adolescent State argued, according to their enlightenments and predilections, 
with all the fer\'or that legislative orators are accustomed to assume when they 
only about half understand the theme they are discussing; for it is fair to 
presume that many of them had never seen a theatrical performance, and but 
few sufficiendy often to form very intelligent ideas as to the moral or immoral 



88 A CENTURY AFTER. 

influence of the drama. As a fine art, however, the drama found able and 
eloquent champions in such men as General Anthony Wayne and Robert Morris, 
and the sturdy common sense with which they backed their argument carried 
the day in favor of the theatres. 

The opening of the Chestnut Street Theatre in February, 1794, was an 
important event in the theatrical annals of Philadelphia. For more than three- 
score years this handsome house was the chief home of the drama in the City 
of Penn. It was forced to succumb some twenty odd years ago to the march 
of improvement, and a newer, sprucer, and more ornate house, half a mile distant, 
now bears its name. The original Chestnut Street Theatre was the "Old Drury" 
of Philadelphia, and its classic and imposing frontage, Avith its row of columns 
flanked by not undignified statues of Tragedy and Comedy, promised well for 
the character of the dramatic fare provided within its walls. The Chestnut was 
strong in its stock companies, and old play-goers have fond recollections of some 
of the combinations of great actors and actresses that have appeared there in 
times gone by. The reputation of the old Chestnut as a stock theatre has, in a 
degree, been inherited by the Arch Street Theatre, in Arch street above Sixth, 
which under a succession of managers has maintained itself in the favor of the 
public by the strength of its companies. The Walnut Street Theatre, at Ninth 
and Walnut streets, has been for a very long term of years the "star" house 
of Philadelphia. This theatre may be considered as the home of Tragedy, just as 
the muse of Comedy has shown a preference for the Arch, and its boards have 
been trodden by all the great dramatic performers who have appeared before 
Philadelphia audiences since its erection. It was at this theatre that Rachel 
gave her last performance in America, and it is said that the severe cold which 
she caught through the chilling draughts of the stage was the incipient cause 
of her last and fatal illness. The character personated by the great French 
tragedienne on this occasion was "Camille," in "Les Horaces." Before the 
erection of the Academy of Music, wandering operatic and concert troupes were 
accustomed to appear from time to time at the Walnut, so that the house may 
be said to have a musical as well as a dramatic history. 

Dramatic performances of various kinds are given at the Academy of Music 
nearly every season, as well as at the regular theatres. It is customary for stars, 
who, for various reasons, are unable to effect engagements at the smaller houses, 
to solicit the patronage and applause of the public at the Academy. Not to 
mention the great English-speaking artists who have from time to time appeared 
there, it is sufficient for our present purpose to allude to the fact that it was 



ACADEMY OF MUSIC. 89 

at the Academy that Ristori, Janauschek, Seebach, and Salvini, first revealed 
to Philadelphia audiences the extent of their genius, and demonstrated the 
truthfulness of the reports of their greatness which had preceded them across 
the Atlantic. The Academy, however, notwithstanding its unsurpassed acoustic 
properties, which permit the slightest stage whisper to be distinctly heard in the 
remotest part of the auditorium, is not particularly well suited for dramatic 
performances, on account of its immense size, — actors as well as audience havino- 
a preference for a house where they can be close enough to each other to o-et 
upon reasonably familiar terms. If the Academy, however, is too laro-e for 
general theatrical purposes, Its Immense stage and Its valuable stock of scenery 
offer many facilities for the production of spectacular plays, and a number of 
these glittering pieces have been successfully brought out there. 

Apart from its dramatic and musical uses, the Academy is in extensive 
demand as a public hall — for such purposes, to mention a pleasant incident, as 
the International Tea Party given there not long ago under the auspices of the 
Ladies' Centennial Committee. Ball committees can find no place In the city 
so well adapted to their purposes — the grand ball to the Grand Duke Alexis 
of Russia, was given there; and popular lecturers, who are sure of attractino- laro-e 
audiences, prefer It to halls less Imposing in dimensions and less Impressive In 
appearance. This preference is not to be wondered at, for, independendy of the 
fact that the Academy will seat comfortably a larger audience than any other 
house in Philadelphia, an orator can make himself heard with so much ease and 
with so little strain to the voice that he is certain of being able to appear to 
the best advantage. The great size of this building makes it a favorite place 
for the holding of public gatherings of all kinds, from a mass-meeting to protest 
against some popular grievance, to a convention for nominating a President of 
the United States. It was in the Academy of Music that the convention which 
nominated Grant for a second term assembled and transacted the important 
(.luties devolving upon It. 




BROAD STREET. 



WHEN William Penn laid out his city he divided it, east and west and 
north and south, by broad avenues, which he intended should be its 
principal thoroughfares. High or Market street, as it is now called, which 

runs east and west, as the city 
grew was occupied by merchants, 
who reo-arded not the dictates of 
fashion, and fashionable people in 
disdain forsook its pavement and 
selected Chestnut street for their 
promenade. Broad street, which 
runs north and south, and which 
is the longest street in the world, 
for a less accountable reason was 
also neglected by fashion, and until 
within a comparatively few years 
past the chief buildings on it were 
VW:^';''r"'^'''' ■ F '-^^^T'-*f'^ if'^'li^UH factories and warehouses of various 

kinds. A few fine residences 

having been erected upon 

the upper portion of 




'■j'^, 




^95? 



2^.'.^/v-.3> .-t- 



mNA(.i)G1'E AXn l;l<ii\ii STRFET. 



BROAD STREET. 



the street, the mass of Philadel- 
phians suddenly awoke to the 
fact that they had in this an 
avenue that as a promenade 
and a drive is unsurpassed. A 
rage for the improvement of this 
street therefore set in, and, with 
the removal of the structures 
that encumbered it and the laying 
of a suitable pavement, the work 
of transformation may be said 
to have fairly commenced. On 
upper Broad street are a great 
number of very elegant private 
residences, the carefully-tended 
gardens attached to which make 
this one of the most beautiful 
parts of the city. As a drive it 
is popular at all seasons of the 
year, but is in the height of its 
glory in mid-winter after a heavy 
fall of snow. At such a time it 
. is alive from morning till night, 
and, it is scarcely too much to 
say, from night until morning, 
with sleighs of all kinds, sizes, 
and conditions. The improved 
portions of North Broad street 
may be said to terminate at 
Green street, where, just above, 
swelling in strong relief against 
the sky, is the tower and dome 
of the synagogue w^here worship 
the congregation Rodef Shalom. Its Moresque style of architecture, with its 
elaborate ornamentation, produces a novel and pleasing effect, and contrasts well 
with the more generally prevailing styles. Adjoining rises the tall spire of the 
North Broad Street Presbyterian Church, and opposite is the Boys' High School, 
— the "People's College," — an institution which is a fitting crown to the public- 
school system of Philadelphia. 




TOWER OF THK MASONIC TF.MPI.F:. 



92 A CENTURY AFTER. 

From this point to the Academy of Fine Arts — a subject to be hereafter 
treated — the street on both sides is as yet unimproved. Prominent among the 
cluster of spires and towers which rise above the walls of the new municipal 
buildings, now being erected at the intersection of Broad and Market streets, is 
the tall and massive granite tower of the Masonic Temple, at the corner of 
Broad and Filbert streets. Built in the Norman st}'le of Architecture — this 
Temple, with its grand proportions, its solidity of construction, and its rich 
adornments, forms a magnificent example of the city's architectural growth, and 
an enduring monument to the taste and enterprise of its projectors. It was 
dedicated on the twenty-sixth day of September, 1873, with all the impressiveness 
peculiar to Masonic ceremony, in the presence of a vast throng of spectators, 
through whose compact masses the brethren, arrayed in their rich regalia, with 
numbers largely augmented from abroad, passed into the building. As compared 
with the old, modest hall on the west side of Third street, above Spruce, where, 
twenty-five years ago. Masonic lodges were held, and the more recent handsome 
Gothic structure on Chestnut street, the Masonic Temple of to-day fitly represents 
the progress, wealth, influence, and social distinction of the Order. 



UNION LEAGUE. 



All places have their local prejudices, and a city so strongly marked in its 
individualities as Philadelphia could not fail to have an abundance of them. 
Until recently a marked instance of this took the form of an antipathy to 
clubs. This antipathy seemed a little absurd to visitors from places where 
well-conducted clubs were regarded as essential to the proper masculine enjoyment 
of life; and yet it had a certain sensible and practical reason for its existence, — 
for the common boast of this being a city of homes is not an idle one, and its 
people think now, as they did a century ago, that there is no better place than 
home for a man to enjoy his leisure in. The demand for club accommodations 
never has existed in Philadelphia, and probably never will, to the same extent as 
in some other localities. As the city expanded its boundaries, however, and men 
were compelled to transact their business at long distances from their homes, the 
want of some such accommodations as are furnished by club-houses became a 
matter of serious consideration; but the prejudice against such institutions was 







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O 

ca 

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o 

o 
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o 

Id 
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94 A CENTURY AFTER. 

so strong that their organization would have been difficult, if not impossible, but 
for an unexpected and extraordinary combination of circumstances. 

The Wistar parties, which white-haired gentlemen of the last generation 
are fond of regfardino- as the consummations of intellectual and gastronomic 
delight, did not at all represent the club idea. These parties were originally 
weekly gatherings of the members of the Philosophical Society at the house 
of Dr. Casper Wistar. After his death they were continued for many years 
by the members of the society, who met at each other's houses in turn. The 
Saturday Night Club and the Social Art Club meetings are not unworthy of 
being regarded as revivals of the Wistar parties, they being managed on the 
same general plan. The Philadelphia Club, which for many years has occupied a 
spacious building, with an unpretentious brick exterior, at the corner of Thirteenth 
and Walnut streets, is the oldest regular club in the city. But, noticeable rather 
for the quiet exclusiveness which has ever attended its career, its example has in 
nowise been influential in popularizing club-life, or breaking down the old-fashioned 
prejudice against it. That task was reserved for the Union League. 

The most curious fact in the history of the Union League as a social club 
is that nothing was farther from the intentions of those who organized it than 
to make it what it has really become. There is no doubt that could some of 
the staid and sober gentlemen who founded the institution have foreseen that 
such a club as exists to-day was to result from their labors they would without 
a doubt have dismissed the whole project. These gentlemen, however, having 
been beguiled out of their prejudices, relish the pleasures of club-life perhaps 
even more keenly than do their more youthful associates, and are among the 
most active, influential, and zealous members of the Leaeue. The Union Leaeue 
was organized for the purpose of extending aid and comfort to the Government 
during the civil war, and the patriotic obligations assumed by its organizers were 
more than fulfilled. An enthusiastic devotion to the Union in its time of peril 
brought together a great number of gentlemen of wealth and position, of all 
ages, and from all parts of the city, and broke down to a great degree the 
spirit of clannishness that had hitherto prevailed. Most of them were rather 
astonished at discovering what a goodly number of rare good fellows Philadelphia 
contained, and they had a social club well under way before they exactly knew 
what they were doing. 

The organization of the Union League being finally determined upon, the 
next care was to provide suitable accommodations for its members, and the 
money was promptly contributed for the purchase of ground in an eligible locality. 



BROAD STliEET. 




UNION" I-EAGI:E house. 



and for the erection of a handsome buikHnjr. A most admirable site was 
selected on the west side of Broad street, below Chestnut — a central position, 
within easy distance of the Academy of Music, the principal places of amusement, 
and of the public resorts, and of the homes and places of business of most of 
the members. The club-house erected on this site is an irregular and picturesque 
structure of brick and brown-stone, which only needs the surroundings of a 
graceful litde park to be very imposing and chateau-like, and is much the finest 
building of the kind in the United States. 

By becoming a social club the original objects for which the Union League 
came into existence were advanced rather than retarded. The advantages of 



96 A CENTURY AFTER. 

such a place of resort were keenly appreciated when they were understood, and 
many of the best citizens of Philadelphia became members, who but a short 
time before would have promptly discouraged the idea of forming a social 
club. For some time after the conclusion of the war, the Union League 
continued to take an active part in local and national politics and exerted 
a very potent influence. Gradually, however, social predominated over political 
ideas within its walls, and while it still takes a part in politics to some extent, 
it will probably require some great convulsion like the civil war to make it 
the political power it originally was. The Union League, however, continues 
true to its early traditions in one respect, — its hospitalities are as unbounded as 
ever, and it is always eager to do honor to eminent men, whether Americans 
or foreigners, whose record could justly claim such distinction. The halls and 
parlors of the League House are adorned with portraits of soldiers and 
statesmen, and with many interesting trophies. It also possesses a number of 
valuable paintings and other works of art, and, during the interval between the 
destruction of the old Academy of Fine Arts and the erection of the new 
one, it has done an important service for the advancement of artistic taste in 
Philadelphia by holding "art receptions," when the walls of the banqueting- room 
and other apartments have been hung with numerous choice examples of native 
and foreign art. During several seasons, in the summer time, it has been 
customary to give open-air concerts in the garden attached to the building, 
which have afforded much pleasure to the members and their friends. 

The Reform Club, which occupies a white marble building on Chestnut street, 
above Fifteenth, likewise had its origin in a political movement, but, like the 
League, is now devoted rather to social enjoyment than to the advancement of 
political projects. This club effected an innovation on club customs by offering 
the entree of the house to the lady relatives of members, to the extent of 
permitting them to patronize the restaurant. This privilege has been highly 
appreciated, and has done much to popularize this club with these natural enemies 
of clubs. There is quite a large and beautiful garden attached to the house, 
where, as at the Union League, during the summer season, a fine orchestra 
performs on stated evenings each week. 

A short distance from the Union League and the Reform Club, in North-west 
Penn Square, the Sketch Club — a modest but influential association of artists — 
and the Chess Club have their quarters in the same building. The Penn Club, 
an outgrowth of the "Penn Monthly Association," is a recently-formed association 
of gentlemen of literary and ardstic taste. 



THE CHURCHES. 



IF our ancestors could have read the history of their own time, as we have 
learned to read it, they would have been wiser and happier than they were, 
for they would have known that nothing could have stopped the march of human 
progress. Their social conditions were unfavorable; they were restricted in the 
exercise of their rights; their knowledge was imperfect, and their sympathies 
narrow and callous. That all was not what it should be, was felt by all; but 
how to change it ? Would it ever be any better, and if so, when ? That questions 
like these were perpetually put we can well imagine, for there never was a time 
when such questions were not put, and not answered, hopefully or otherwise. To 
be satisfied with what is, is to be without spirit: the life that is content with it 
is slavish and bestial. Manhood is made of other stuff — of dissatisfaction, of 
daring, if need be, of desperation and death. There is a spirit of dissatisfaction 
in the world which is divine, in that it compels man to examine the life that he 
leads, the imperfections of which it exposes, and the possible cure of which it 
reveals. The law of development is change, — at one time of leaders, at another 
of creeds, at last of habitations. The history of human progress is the history 
of successive departures, the most important of which so far is the departure 
from the old world to the new. There is something- in the outward surround- 
ings of man which moulds his inner nature, and which, when exhausted, — as it is 
by the centuries, — abandons him in stunted childhood, such as prevails in China. 
Life has gone out of his land: there is no warmth in the sun, no refreshment 
in the wind, no mystery in the sea and sky. He must go elsewhere or die. 
He migrates at last, following the sun by some strange insdnct. From the great 
mountains and table-lands of Asia, across the mountains and valleys and plains 
of Europe, the course of empire is always westward. Ulti7ua Thule. TJialatta! Is 
that the end? He will not believe it: there must be something more. There are 
Fortunate Isles beyond the Pillars of Hercules, — the great condnent of Atlantis, — 
a new world! That this spirit of dissatisfaction and inquiry and belief has always, 
existed, and was especially active in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, cannot 
escape the student of modern history, which, when rightly read, is litde else 
than the history of the awakening of the human mind. It awoke to a sense 
of its exhaustion and its desires — a sense of its capacides and its needs — a sense 

(97) 



A CENTURY AFTER. 




■nrEST ARCH STREET PRESBYTERIAN CHITRCH. 



of its rights and its determination. The race had taken a new departure. What 
the new world was to tlie old world we see much more clearly than the master- 
spirits who discovered it, and who, it must be confessed, were actuated by no 
very high motives. They sought a short passage to India in order to possess 
themselves more quickly of its commerce; they sought new countries over which 
to extend their sovereignty and that of the Church; they sought the gold of the 
dusky peoples, and latterly they sought to rob and despoil each other on the 



THE CHURCHES. 



99 



seas. They were a rough set of adventurers, those old Argonauts, and they 
found the golden fleece for which they sailed. But they found more, for, like 
the ferryman of which the German poet tells us, they carried unseen passengers. 
Spirits crossed the ocean with them — the beneficent spirits which have shaped 
the destiny of their descendants — Freedom, which had long been a stranger to 
the old world, and Toleration, which it never knew. The horizon widened as 
they left the land; stars rose as the lights of their homes sank; and, night gone, 
they saluted a brighter day. The new world — old to its then possessors — 
demanded a new race. It is curious to note the influences which moulded our 
ancestors from the beginning, and of which they were apparently unconscious — 
the enlargement of their lives and actions — the liberalit}' and potentiality of their 
thoughts. With the exception of the Puritans, who from persecution onl)- learned 
persecution, they were tolerant. The wilderness was a temple where every man 
worshiped God in his own way. Nowhere was this fact so widely recognized 
as in Pennsylvania, which, colonized later than the eastern seaboard, was soon 
a shining example to the whole continent. When William Penn landed at the 
Blue Anchor tavern, it was neither to aggrandize himself nor the society to 
which he belonged, and which deserved the name of Friends. "I took charge 
of the province of Pennsylvania," he wrote, "for the Lord's sake. I wanted to 
afford an asylum to the good and oppressed of every nation, and to frame a 
government which might be an example. I desired to show men as free and 
happy as they could be, and I had kind views to the Indians." Other colonists 
may have persuaded themselves that their views were equally kind, but they 
have failed to convince the world that such was the case. It was no doubt a 
difficult problem which had to be solved, — the dwelling together in peace and 
friendship of two races — the one savage, the other civilized — the one steadily 
wasting, the other as steadily increasing, — but it might have been solved, it would 
seem, to the advantage of both. For the Indian, though savage, was still a man, 
and the colonist, though civilized, was no more. Indeed, it may be questioned 
whether the social condition of the red race was lower than was originall)' the 
social condition of the white races, which claimed to be its superior, and by virtue 
of this superiority to exterminate it. The beginning of all peoples, whatever 
their color, appears to have been identical. Such, at any rate, is the lesson of 
ethnology', though it is only of late years that it has come to be apprehended. 
Whether there is or can be an equality of races — an intellectual and social 
equality, that is — may admit of discussion; diat there is a cosmical equality 
among them admits, we think, of none. The children of one great Father, who 



lOo A CENTURY AFTER. 

has made of one blood all the nations of the earth, they are alike the objects 
of his love and the creatures of his bounty: they are equal in His eyes and in 
the eyes of that tribunal of thought which the world has elected to sit in His 
invisible place, and to judge mankind in His divine stead. Penn perceived this 
noble truth and practiced it in his dealings with the Indians, his treaty with 
whom is the only one that was not ratified with an oath, and the only one that 
was never broken. 

The dwellings of many of the first colonists of Philadelphia were of the most 
primitive nature, — for though houses were in process of erection on the arrival of 
Penn, the river bank was dotted with cabins and caves. The latter were generally 
formed, we are told, by digging into the ground about three feet in depth, near the 
verge of the river-front bank, half the chamber being under ground, while the 
remaining half, above ground, was made of sods of earth, or earth and bush 
combined. 

The cave-dwellers, if we may call them such, were soon routed, and their 
places filled by a better class of citizens. The lofty spruce pines along the 
river front were felled, the underbrush was cleared away, and the surveyor toiled 
through the openings with his chain, east, west, north, and south, laying out the 
streets of the future city — the City of Brotherly Love. The woods resounded 
with the stroke of axes and the crash of faUine trees. Houses rose here and 
there, — plain but substandal buildings, suited to the vigorous race who erected 
them. Courts were built for the administration of jusdce, and churches for the 
worship of God. Our ancestors were simple-minded, reverent men, to whom 
God appeared nearer than he does to us. They acknowledged Him in their 
daily lives. He was a light to their path and a guide to their feet. They felt 
His presence in the woods which surrounded them — the dense, pathless woods 
in which, until they came, His name was never heard, but in which, and in the 
towns and cities which would soon displace their pillared shades, it would never 
cease to be heard. The spirit by which they were animated was shared by other 
colonists, but not in the same degree, for elsewhere the majority, whatever their 
faith, were more dogmatic and less tolerant. Not to believe as they did was 
to be guilty of damnable heresy. Religious toleration — which is generally the 
last thing that a nation learns — was one of the first things that was practiced, 
if not learned, in Pennsylvania. If it was not indigenous to the virgin soil of 
the new world, it was the noblest growth that was transplanted to it; "a bright, 
consummate fiower." May it never fade! Feed it, earth, with thy richest sap! 
Rain down upon it, heaven, thy holiest dew! 



I02 A CENTURY AFTER. 

A history of the churches of Philadelphia would be interesting even to 
worldly-minded readers, in that it would indicate as clearly as their social and 
political history the characters of its early settlers. They grew from small 
beginnings and in the face of discouragements. The Presbyterian and Baptist 
churches, for example, were so poor that they were obliged to meet, at first, 
in the same building. The ground which it occupied, on the north-west corner 
of Chestnut and Second streets, was known as the Barbadoes-lot store. The 
Baptists first assembled there in the winter of 1695. Their society consisted of 
only nine persons, who had occasionally a minister from Pennypeck, where there 
was a church of their own sect, older and more numerous than that of Philadelphia. 
The Presbyterians must have been few in number, for they attended worship at 
the same place, joining together mutually, it is said, as often as one or the other 
could procure either a Baptist or Presbyterian minister. Their spiritual fellowship, 
which is pleasant to remember, brief as was its continuance, continued for about 
three years, when the Presbyterians, having secured a minister of their own from 
New England, began to manifest a desire to have the building to themselves, 
and an unwillingness to attend the Baptist services. The Baptists, therefore, 
seceded, and obtained possession of a brew-house, or what had been one, which 
belonged to one Anthony Morris, and was on the east side of Water street, near 
Dock creek. They met here for about ten years, when they joined the Keithians, 
a body of seceders from the Quakers. Then they removed to a small wooden 
building on Second street, below Mulberry street, where they remained twenty-five 
years, when it was pulled down and a brick building was erected in its stead. 
This was displaced about thirty years later by another of larger dimensions, in 
which they worshiped during the stormy days of the Revolution, and which 
was subsequently altered and enlarged. 

We must not be beguiled, however, into writing the history of the churches 
of Philadelphia, but content ourselves here with a glance at a few which attract 
our attention as we saunter through the quiet neighborhoods in which they are 
situated. Foremost among these is the West Arch Street Presbyterian Church, 
a stately edifice of the Corinthian order of architecture, whose dome and minarets 
are suggestive of some composite Eastern style, in keeping with its original 
character. The sunlight strikes upon its columns as we pass it, and throws 
the shadows of the twinkling leaves on its arched windows. A good example 
of Gothic architecture is the Calvary Presbyterian Church, on Locust street, 
near Fifteenth. More striking, perhaps, but less pure in style, is the Memorial 
Baptist Church, on the north-east corner of Broad and Master streets. It is 



THE CHURCHES. 




CATIIEDKAL OK ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL. 



planned like an amphitheatre: the front, on Master street, is circular, the doors 
being surrounded and surmounted by windows; the main window, which is 
arched, and over forty feet hig-h, looks out on Broad street. The walls, which 
are of green stone, with light stone trimmings, give one a pleasant 



feeling 



104 ^ CENTURY AFTER. 

of color that is deepened by the decorations they enclose, which are beautiful, 
and so contrived as to heighten the appearance of the interior. Another 
sacred edifice, the Grace Methodist Episcopal Church, is being built on the 
north-west corner of Broad and Master streets. The rear, or chapel, which is 
now finished, is of white marble and Gothic in style. The Lutheran Church of 
the Holy Communion, on the south-west corner of Broad and Arch streets, is 
different from any church yet built in Philadelphia. Its most striking feature will 
be the massive tower, which is to rise, without a break, ninety-two feet. Projecting 
from the corners, at this height, are to be circular turrets, with pinnacles, between 
which will rise the walls of the tower, like those of a strong fortress. Above all 
is to be a slated Mansard roof, with Louvre windows, and on its peak an 
ornamental railing. This church, which is of the florid German-Gothic style, has 
two magnificent windows, of stained glass, and an altar which is considered one 
of the richest in the country. St. Mark's Episcopal Church, on the north side of 
Locust, above Sixteenth street, is a fine specimen of decorative Gothic. Its 
stately, clean-cut walls and massive tower, from which rises a lofty spire — its 
broad arches and forest-like roof — its chancel, niches, and altar, glimmering in 
dim, religious light, or bathed in the full tide of morning, which pours through 
its eastern window — impress the mind and touch the heart with feelings of 
reverence and awe. Still more impressive is the Roman Catholic Cathedral of 
St. Peter and St. Paul, fronting on Logan Square. It is in the Roman-Corinthian 
style, and upwards of one million of dollars were expended in its construction, 
-which occupied eighteen years. The interior is cruciform: there are no side 
windows, the light being introduced from above. It is adorned with frescoes of 
the Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi, the Crucifixion, and the Assumption 
of the Virgin into Heaven, and with figures of the four Apostles and the 
Evangelists. If devotion can be awakened by architecture, and painting, and 
music, and the splendid ceremonials of an ancient faith, it will be here. If it 
seeks for something simpler and more austere, it will find it, no doubt, in some 
old Quaker place of worship — perhaps in the Orthodox Friends' meeting-house, 
on the corner of Fourth and Arch streets. A large, capacious building, set back 
from the street, surrounded by shady trees and enclosed by brick walls which 
shut it from view, it is a fitting memorial of the spirit which, seeking a home 
in the wilderness, laid the foundations of the noble city in which it stands. 
Here, if anywhere, dwells in peaceful seclusion the genius of the place. 



FAIRMOUNT PARK. 








CONNECTING BRIDGE AND TUNNEL. 



IF tlie spirits of the happy dead remember the desires which were nearest to 
their hearts during their sojourn here, and are cognizant of their fulfillment 
since their departure, the spirit of Penn must surely delight in such a memorial 
of his wishes, such a monument of his intentions, as Fairmount Park. Accustomed 
to the business and busde of cides, familiar with the ways and courts of princes, 
he preserved to the last a simple, sylvan nature, which turned insdnctively to 
the woods and waters of the new world. There was that in the light and 

(105) 



io6 A CENTURY AFTER. 

shade of its forests — solitudes of ancient greenery, whose silence was broken 
only by the song of birds — and in the slumbering murmur of its streams, which 
appealed to what was best in him, and was a never-failing spring of inward 
satisfaction. He was as native to the wilderness as the red men who peopled 
it at his coming, and, wiser than they, he knew what it was, and was to be, to 
him and his followers. It was more than a happy home in which they dwelt 
in happiness and freedom, at peace with each other, and in communion with 
God and nature. It was the vantage-ground of a better life than had been 
theirs in the old world; a retreat from struggles that were past, and a strong- 
hold whence the future would issue triumphantly. Men in the olden time had 
withdrawn from the world — some to brood over the misfortunes which had 
befallen them or their country, others to show their contempt for mankind, 
and others to propitiate heaven by prayers and fasts and penances. Hermits, 
philosophers, patriots, — ascetics, cynics, cowards, — their lives were a mistake, 
and their death the ceasing of laborious but useless breath. Not such the life 
and death of the vigorous, courageous, right-minded men who built themselves 
homes in the wilderness, and cheerfully awaited what was in store for them. 

Fairmount Park is a text from which many fruitful discourses might be 
preached. It suggests the feeling which it stimulates, — love of nature, and 
which, if not indirectly the growth of the new world, is certainly not indigenous 
to the old world and the old time. The ancients do not appear to have cared 
for nature, or to have scrutinized it with observant eyes. They were familiar 
with its great facts, — ^day, night, the sky, the sea, the sun, moon, and stars, — 
but nothing else. They characterized them by the simplest adjectives — the 
bright day, the dark night, the blue sky, the gray sea. They saw what they 
could not help seeing, but no more. They noticed the obvious: the subtle, the 
poetic, the spiritual escaped them. They Avere not touched to fine issues. 

"The light that never was on sea and land" shone from other heavens and 
to later men. Natural description Is of modern origin. It is seldom introduced, 
and at best but sparingly, in ancient literature. It assisted Homer, perhaps, 
in his similes, but it formed no portion of his narrative, either in the Iliad or 
the Odyssey. If Virgil attempted it, it was as Pope attempted it — as mere 
literature, which Is destructive of the life and freshness of nature. Men had 
other things to think of then: the business of their lives and the State; the 
worship of their gods; the winning of crowns at chariot-races and wrestling- 
matches; defense of themselves and the conquest of their neighbors,- — every- 
thing, in short, that was of the earth, earthy. Later, when they professed a 



FAIRMOUNT PARK. 107 

purer faith and their minds were turned, as they believed, heavenward, nature 
was less and less to them. If they saw it, it was as if they saw a phantas- 
magoria. What was this world, pra)', to the world that was to come — the world 
to which they were hastening, and in which they were to be happy or miserable 
forever? They must save their souls — that is, they must obey their priests, who 
alone knew how to save their souls. Not by natural lives, by the enjoyment 
of simple things, by the. virtues which are inherent, could their salvation be 
insured: self-denial and self-sacrifice were required, mortification of the flesh and 
humiliation of the spirit, abnegation, abasement, punishment. With such burdens 
laid upon them, what pleasure could men be expected to take in nature? To 
have allowed it to divert their minds, as it might have done, would have been 
a snare of the Evil One. 

One has but to read the narratives of the old voyagers and travelers to 
see that the new world opened man's eyes to nature. If it did not recover a 
lost sense, it discovered a new one, which he is in no dancrer of losinof. It 
was to the world he had left what the Atlantic was to the Mediterranean — the 
only sea with which the ancients were acquainted — or the Andes to Olympus, 
whence their gods had long since departed. Its grandeur enlarged, its beauties 
freshened, the soul. It bore the same relation to the old world that a park does 
to a city: it was the park of the earth. The knowledge of this fact, which did 
not present itself at first as knowledge but as belief, — sensation that precedes 
thought, — the strange intelligence that gropes towards us in darkness and 
embraces us in light, — 

"Felt in the blood and felt along the heart," — 

the invisible presence of nature haunted the whole continent. Centuries have 
passed, — the woods have been felled, towns and cities have risen like exhalations, 
rivers and lakes are whitened with sails, the land is covered with a net-work 
of iron, — yet it has not vanished. Parks like Fairmount are not needed to teach 
us this, for, go where we will, the new world is a new world still. So, at least, 
think the tourists of Europe, whether they clamber among the green hills of the 
East or wander along the prairies of the West, fishing in the Adirondacks, or 
hunting in the Rocky Mountains, — wherever curiosity or adventure leads them, 
they are surprised by nature. We have learned to look upon it calmly — so 
calmly that we occasionally require to be reminded of it, and to have it brought 
to our doors, as it is in Fairmount. 



FAJRMOUNT PARK. 



109 



The history of civilization in America, until within a recent period, is a 
history of man's struggles with nature. Before we can begin to understand it, 
we must imagine, if we can, the condition of the continent when the w-hite race 
first set foot on its shores. It was a wilderness, — along the margin of the sea, 
along the borders of the rivers, along the sides of the mountains, — as far as 
the eye could reach stretched an unbroken wilderness. It hemmed the white 
race in on every side. Would they be able to subdue it, and plant the civilization 
of the old world in its place; or would it subdue them, as it had the savages by 
whom it was sparsely populated? The prospect was not promising, for, besides 
the woods which encircled them, they were surrounded with hostile tribes. It 
was a hand-to-hand fight with their savagery and with nature, and if it made 
them stern, and at times cruel, it is not to be wondered at. Struorgrles such as 
they were engaged in are not calculated to soften the heart and refine the 
mind. That they should at last hate the woods and their dusky inhabitants, and 
resolve to exterminate both, was natural. That this feeling, or something akin 
to it, was active among them, is evident, we think, from the disfavor with which 
they came to regard nature, and from their destruction of its beauty and 
grandeur. They seemed to destroy wantonly, especially in New England, where 
to-day the woods are cut down, whenever the whim seizes their owners, and 
there is a chance of temporary gain. That the landscape is marred thereby, the 
water-courses dried up, and the climate changed, counts for nothing. We owe 
to this spirit the absence of great parks in America — an absence of which we 
are beginning to be conscious, and which we are now trying to repair b)' our 
Mount Auburns, our Central Parks, and our Fairmounts. It is never too late 
to mend. 

The value of a great park like Fairmount cannot be determined by any 
recognized standard. It depends largely on the individuality of its visitants, and 
the influences that they receive from nature. These differ, of course, in different 
minds. One is impressed by forests, another by mountains, a third by the sea. 
Others are delighted with all, surrendering their souls to the embraces of beauty 
and grandeur. There are men for whom nature has no charm. They are not 
to be envied, unless the blind are to be envied, for they are not only deprived 
of pleasure, but are stunted in their intellectual growth. Men cannot be com- 
pletely developed in cities; there is something w^ithin them which demands the 
beauty of country landscapes, and the freshness of country life. They cannot 
have them at all times, but they can have them frequently and at small cost to 
themselves. They can have them in Fairmount. 



no A CENTURY AFTER. 

A drive through Fairmount Park on a summer day is a refreshment to the 
mind and the body. We have left the city behind us — the long, close streets 
sweltering in sunshine; the interminable rows of houses with their inevitable 
white blinds; the crowds that straggle along, dusty, heated, uncomfortable — and 
have reached the grass, the trees, the wind, and the sky. Where shall we go? 
It matters little, for go where we will we are surrounded with beautiful scenery. 
It is not in the least like that which we are accustomed to see in city parks, and 
in which the hand of man is everywhere visible: it is the country — the veritable 
fields and trees and streams. Nature has done everything here and man nothing, 
or if anything, it was so long ago that nature has reclaimed it. There is an 
air of antiquity about the buildings in Fairmount which is in keeping with the 
landscape around them. They recall the high-minded men and women whose 
homes they were, and the hospitable customs of the olden time. Their chambers 
are peopled with stately shadows — patriots, judges, statesmen, who have long- 
since mouldered to dust. 

We have left the city, but it has followed us, for wherever we go we see 
its over-summered citizens enjoying themselves here. They dash along the 
roads in carriages; they saunter on foot along the grassy paths; they lie in the 
dappled shadows of great trees, talking, reading, or listening to the songs of 
birds. A happy curiosity possesses the least curious. Everything is worth 
studying. There is a glamour over familiar objects, even those in which the 
handiwork of man is strikingly conspicuous, such as the noble bridges which 
span the Schuylkill, and are as much a part of Fairmount as if the unseen forces 
of nature had stretched them from bank to bank. There are crowds there, 
perhaps, — on the Girard Avenue Bridge an endless procession of figures, and 
on the Connecting Bridge a smoky locomotive tearing across with a long train 
of cars, — but somehow they do not disturb the sylvan beauty of the park. They 
do not people it, as they come and go; they merely add to the picturesqueness. 
They animate it as figures do a landscape in which they are introduced. The 
scream of the locomotive is lost in the distance, Hke the cry of a gull on the 
shore, or the caw of a crow in the woods. 

The glimpse of the park — for it is little more which one catches as he is 
whirled across the bridge — is striking enough to be remembered by a lover of 
the picturesque. Before he is aware, the train in which he is seated is no longer 
on the solid earth, but, without having risen, is hurrying rapidly over it. The 
streets through which he was passing just now have disappeared, and he is above 
a beautiful river. He looks down a moment on its waters as they pursue their 



FAIRMOUNT PARK. 







OAKS AND ROCKS ABOVE COLD SPRING. 



journey to the sea, and tries to forget, if he is timid and sensitive, the height at 
which he is. He Hfts his eye and takes in at a glance the broad sweep of the 
landscape, the shining river and its wooded bank, the white clouds and the blue 
sky. He takes it all in as a bird might — perhaps as a bird does when it is 
winging its way through it. It is worth coming many a long league to see, 
especially if the woods have put on their royal robes of purple and scarlet and 



112 A CENTURY AFTER. 



& 



gold. Nowhere is nature more opulent of color than in Fairmount. But the 
river is crossed, and the picture is gone, for here are the streets again. 

When one has seen as much of Fairmount as can be seen at once — which, 
after all, is not much, whether his point of view be the bridge or the drive along 
the river bank — it is well to study some single feature of it in detail. There 
are many little pictures in this great picture, which are perfect in themselves, 
and which separate themselves in the eye of an artist from those which surround 
them. He has only to frame them for himself, so to speak, — a habit of the craft, 
common to all its followers. Something has been done for him and for us by 
the architecture of the railroad bridge, whose noble arches are the frames of 
magnificent landscapes. One need not be an architect to appreciate the beauty 
of open arches in structures like these, nor an artist to enjoy the effect they 
produce. Their curving lines, emblems of grace and strength, and suggestions of 
the great arch above, delight the eye, and increase the value of whatever they 
enclose. The mind goes out through them as through the gates of a city into a 
fair country beyond. What fairer country can it find than stretches before us 
here on either side of the silvery, rippling Schuylkill? 

As we approach Girard Avenue Bridge the sylvan prospect vanishes. We 
might as well be in town as here, we think, for we are in the midst of a 
greater bustle than we left in town. A continuous string of carriages, tangled 
in what seems inextricable confusion — four-in-hands with their nobby outriders, 
coaches, landaus, dog-carts. Miss curveting on the saddle, and Master ambling 
beside her on his jsony, — beaus, belles, husbands, wives, children, old, young, 
wealth, fashion, pretense, silks, laces, diamonds — Vanity Fair is out airing itself 
to-day. This is the cynical way of looking at it: the wiser way would be to 
admire it, as one would a brilliant procession of which he was merely a spectator. 
We cannot all be what we would like to be, nor have what we would like to 
have, but we can abstain from sneering- at those who are more fortunate than 
ourselves. We can do better than that — we can enjoy what they are, and do. 
We can make them minister to the sense of beauty as surely as pictures and 
music. Let us say that the crowded drive is a picture, and that the noise of 
the rolling wheels is music, and get all the good we can out of them. There is 
something imposing in a multitude, something rythmical and noble and magnifi- 
cent, — like the unceasing flow of a great river, or the everlasting movement of 
the ocean. Not to consider it too curiously, however, there is another and 
better reason why we should be interested in a multitude, and that is because it 
consists of men and women like ourselves. "I am a man," the old philosopher 



FAIR MOUNT PARK. 







MOUNT PLEASANT — ARNOLD S HOUSE. 



reasoned, "and what relates to man relates to me." Poets like Byron deny this, 
but Shakespeare never. 



"One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. 



It may be a noble action, a pathetic poem, the smile of a child, or it may be, 
as here, thousands of happy human beings. 

Shall we take our places in the long procession of carriages, or shall we let 
our driver wander at his own sweet will? Suppose we go to Mount Pleasant. 



114 A CENTURY AFTER. 

We shall pass the fountain, and if our discourse prove dry, we can do as the 
birds do — wet our whistles. There it is, spouting up into the air, like some gay 
creature of the elements rejoicing in its escape from the under-world. Out of 
the darkness into lioht — out of caverns where the sun never shone into the 
golden, happy day. He would be a rare poet who could so describe it that we 
should see its brightness in his verse, and hear its merry tinkle in its rhythm. 
But the poets, sad dogs that they are, have never taken kindly to water; they 
prefer wine, if not always to drink, at least as a pretended source of inspiration. 
From Anacreon down they have celebrated the juice of the grape. Wine rhymes 
with divine, and other fine words, but there is no good rhyme to water. Perhaps 
the leaves know one, or the birds, or the wind that sways it hither and thither, 
shakinof an endless shower of diamonds in the basin below. Diamonds of the 
first water — nothing describes so well the purity of perfect gems. We said that 
they were shaken into the basin, but we should have said into the casket, for 
what is it but a casket heaped to the brim with transparent jewels — the Treasury 
of Fairmount? Ay, and it lacks not gold, for see yonder where it lies in shining 
ingots. They are only gold fish, you say. If you had any poetry in you, you 
could imagine that they were solid ingots of gold. They glance hitherward, (if 
you will have them fish,) as if they knew that we were talking about them, and 
wanted to hear what we say. No, the poets have never appreciated water, even 
those who have eschewed wine in their songs, and the rhymesters, some of 
whom have tried to like it, have appreciated it still less. 

"Sparkling and bright in its liquid light 
Is the water in our glasses!" 

One wants something to take the taste out of his mouth after a sip at that 
fountain. Let it be the belittled element. Water, ho! a brimmer of sparkhng 
Schuylkill. Of course, a New Yorker prefers Croton, and a Bostonian Cochituate. 
Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of 
Israel? How is it that the old doggerel runs? 

"Many men of many minds, 
Many birds of many kinds, 
Many fishes in the sea, 
Many men that don't agree." 

There's the whole story in a nut-shell. We won't differ about trifles, only, 
if you can, do as Oldys advises, 

"Drink with me, and drink as I." 




KOCKLAND. 



ii6 A CENTURY AFTER. 

A storied place is Mount Pleasant, and populous with memories. If the walls 
of its old mansion had tongues they could a tale unfold. A century and more 
has passed since the motley drama of human life was first played within its 
chambers. The actors therein are the family of John Macpherson, a man of 
probity and honor, whose history, curious as it is, concerns us less than the history 
of his son William. William Macpherson was a born soldier, and a true one, 
in that he could distinguish between his duty to his king and his duty to his 
country. A cadet at thirteen in the army of his obstinate majesty George the 
Third, he tendered his commission early in the Revolution, declaring that he 
would never serve against his countrymen. It was accepted by Sir Henry Clinton, 
and he joined the Continental troops, turning his back upon the home of his 
boyhood, which had then passed out of the possession of his father, to follow 
the waverinof fortunes of war. One can but admire this brave, determined 
young soldier, and wonder if the recollection of his youthful, peaceful days was 
not often in his mind. Did he never see Mount Pleasant in his thoughts, — not 
as we see it now, a deserted old house, from whose windows no face looks out, 
but a noble mansion, peopled with his family, good, old-fashioned folk, of stately 
manners and unbounded hospitality ? Here is the lawn on which he played, and 
here the trees under which he sat, and among whose branches he climbed, perhaps, 
as joyous as the birds above him. Did the life of the boy never revisit the man 
in his dreams? Answer, William Macpherson, valiant soldier, whom Washington 
knew and honored ! But a darker shape appears. 

A man in the prime of life, of not uncomely person and reckless courage, 
his career has been that of an adventurer. A druggist's apprentice and a 
deserting soldier, a trader with the West Indies and now a general of the 
Continental army, his ways have been crooked and suspicious. When the echoes 
of Lexington startled the continent from its perturbed dreams of peace, he 
hastened to Cambridge, as thousands of other brave men were doing, and 
offered his services to his country. He marched into Ticonderoga with Ethan 
Allen, and attacked Quebec with Montgomery. He fought the British on Lake 
Champlain, and, the fight going against him, escaped, burning his galleys with 
all their colors flying. His bravery is applauded, and he is made a brigadier- 
general. But he is not satisfied, for major-generals have been made and he is 
not one of them. What will satisfy his daring, ambitious nature? Money, 
perhaps, for wherever he is he is in trouble about money. He failed when 
he was a trader, and since he has been a soldier his accounts have been 
disputed. He is extravagant and burdened with debts. Something must be 



FAIR MOUNT PARK. 



117 



done. Meanwhile, here he is 
at Mount Pleasant, married 
to a young wife, Margaret 
Shippen that was, daughter 
of Judge Edward Shippen, a 
beautiful Philadelphia belle, 
the toast of the British officers 
when they held the city, and 
a thorough little tory at heart. 
They drink her health still, 
no doubt, one Major Andre 
among them, but not here, for 
her husband is in command. 
Does she love him? It is to 
be hoped so, although it is a 




pity that she should. Does she know 

him? It is to be hoped not, for he is 

a dark, bad man. It cannot be a happy household of which she is the mistress, 

although it may be a bus)' one. It may be peopled with guests and given up 

to gayety: the lights may shine, the wine flow, and music steep the soul in 



1 18 A CENTURY AFTER. 

its delicious languor, but something ails the place and the time. The general is 
under a cloud. He has been mobbed; he is hated; his fortunes are desperate. 
One would not think so to see him, he is so cool, so easy, so assured. At the 
dinner-table, in the ball-room, who merrier than he? But alone, when the guests 
have gone, when he is looking out of the window after them, when he is strolling 
silently about the grounds, is he merry then? Who can tell what his thoughts 
are when alone? 

Here as elsewhere he is in trouble. Charges are brought against him; he 
resigns his command, is court-martialed, and, while acquitted of criminal intent, 
is reprimanded by his commander-in-chief Be sure he will revenge himself 
Before a year is over he will betray his trust. Not here at Mount Pleasant 
with his wife and unborn child, not here by the rippling Schuylkill, but on the 
banks of the lordly Hudson. His wife will come to him with her child in her 
arms, and he will welcome her and kiss her. A paper will be handed him at 
breakfast; he will read it, say something to her, and fly. While she is fainting 
he will abandon her, as he has abandoned his country. Poor woman! She will 
no longer be the toast of British officers;, her friend Andre will not drink her 
health — for he will be hung for the treason of her husband! And he, he will be 
loathed, execrated, insulted, — a man without a country and without a friend. 
Everlasting infamy clings to his memory, the hatred and contempt of mankind. 
Depart, shadow of Benedict Arnold! For you, unhappy wife, pity and tears! 

But Mount Pleasant has its gracious as well as its gloomy memories, for if 
Benedict Arnold once darkened its walls, they were brightened afterwards by the 
majestic figure of Baron Steuben. One loves to think of this soldier of the 
great Frederick, this brave old veteran of Prague and Rossbach, whose stern 
discipline made armies out of our raw levies, and one hopes that he found 
repose here after the rigors of Valley Forge. It matters little where the dust 
of a great man moulders — it is his glory which chiefly concerns us; but one has 
sometimes a wish in the matter, and our wish is that the honored dust of 
Steuben were mouldering at Mount Pleasant, and not where he was buried 
eighty years ago, and where — a soldier to the last — 

"He lies like a warrior taking his rest, 
With his martial cloak around him." 

We have one advantage in our imaginary rambles through Fairmount 
which is not possessed by the ordinary visitant — we can go in an instant just 



FAIRMOUNT PARK. 119 

where we choose. There is no road or path that we must follow in order to 
reach a spot which we desire to see; we have neither to walk to it nor to drive 
to it — -we have but to wish, and we are there. We were at Mount Pleasant; 
we are at Cold Spring, Rockland — where we will. 

"There's something in a flying horse, 
There's something in a huge balloon;" 

but they are outstripped by the imagination in its airy journeys. The flight of 
a bird is as a snail's pace to its speed. It comes like Ariel to answer our best 
pleasure — ■ 

"Be't to fly, 
To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride 
On the curled clouds." 

Leaving Cold Spring behind us, we have a glimpse of the Schuylkill and 
its arched bridge, and the pastoral landscape on its eastern bank. A spirit of 
tranquillity broods over the woods and waters, and imparts its sweetness to our 
minds. There are happy moods in nature, as in man, and one of the happiest 
is here. The undulating sweep of the ground, — the transparent clearness of the 
water, in which as in a mirror the sky is reflected, — the picturesque grouping of 
the trees, stragglers from their crowd of leafy companions — wherein lies the 
charm, the secret of the happy spell? It does not exist at Rockland, whither we 
have transported ourselves. Here we have nature in her sterner mood. Here 
she is magnificent, primitive, just as she came from the tremendous -hand that 
made her. We go back here to the beginning. Time was when the woods 
that we see around us were not. They have grown and passed away like 
generations of men. But the rocks that lift their rugged masses above us, 
steadfast, immovable, deep-rooted, have remained. Empires have vanished like a 
dream: cities have gone — the sand of the desert drifts around their walls, the 
waters of the sea welter along their streets, — but the rocks, pillars of strength, 
monuments of endurance, stand to-day as they stood on the first day. Upheaved 
in some great convulsion of nature, they rose from the dark under- world in 
which their bases are sunken, piled high in the sky by the elemental forces. 
It is awful to think of, and what they reveal as we follow them in thought 
downward — the solid earth beneath our feet, at once a floor and a roof — is more 
awful still. If the fire which it confines should escape from the cavernous 
dungeon, man and his works would disappear. The mountains would crumble, 
the ocean depart, — the world would go whirling away to destruction! Away! — 



I20 A CENTURY AFTER. 

let US drive the thought from us, and surrender ourselves to the grandeur of 
the scene. Let us climb up the great rocks, and standing on the topmost 
ledges look out, as from a watch-tower, on the glorious river before us. It 
stretches away like a long belt of silver, a girdle of brightness dropped amid the 
hills, clasping the island yonder like an emerald. The boat that plies up and 
down scarcely ripples its waters. How little it looks as it creeps along in the 
distance, with its crowd of passengers, whom we can just see lining its decks! 
Are those dwarfs men and women? But the crowds around us — who are they? 







OLD FOLKS DANCING. 



Let us join them, and see. They have come, like ourselves, from the heat of the 
city to the cool air of Rockland; from their homes in the narrow streets to the 
open fields; from their poverty and wretchedness to the liberal, joyous life of 
nature. They are poor, they are old, but kind hearts have remembered them, and 
hospitable hands are ministering to their wants. It is the "Old-Folks' Picnic." 
They are swarming at Rockland, merry as children, — some of them indeed 
children, their years are so many. They have sharp appetites and high spirits. 
Enough to eat and nothing to do — why should they not dance? Hurrah! boys! 
hurrah! girls! Let us shake a leg once more. 



FAIRMOUNT PARK. 121 

Among- the many delectable things which the young Milton imagined as 
belonging to the life of the merry man, and whiclx include the daily sight of 
beautiful landscapes, there is nothing more suggestive of rural happiness than 
this couplet: — 

"Young and old come forth to play 
On a sunshine holiday." 

It is a simple picture, painted with a few touches, such as the great masters 
know how to use, but how delightful it is, and how imaginative! We see it 
at a glance, each for himself, but with the light of the poet's genius upon it. 
What a charming region and time it opens before us, — an Arcadia apart from 
this world of ours, a Golden Age where every day is a holiday. Of course 
they come forth to play, — the shepherd from his fold, the milkmaid from her 
pasture, gray hairs and golden locks, and the tabors sound, and they foot it 
merrily, and sing songs in which life is always youth, and the year is alwajs 
May. How is it that the nursery rhyme runs? 



'All work and no play 
Makes Jack a dull- boy." 



It is a true saying, and as true of Gaffer as of Jack, though the utilitarian is 
slow to admit it. The fact is, we all work too much and play too litde, and 
we are beginning to find it out. We are beginning to learn that our ancestors 
overrated industry and underrated idleness. Health of body and health of mind 
depend as much on one as on the other, or, rather, depend on the alternation 
of both; labor, rest, rest, labor, is the refrain of a well-ordered life. The peoples 
of Europe have long known this, especially the German people, by whom, antl 
whose example in this country, we have been led to see that we need rest 
and amusement. They have not lain within our reach hitherto in our great 
cities, — enormous hives of brick, stone, and wood, whence every vestige of nature 
was banished; but now that we have been awakened to the necessity of parks, 
we can have them almost at our doors, as at Fairmount. A day in the country 
is no longer a matter of consideration, preparation, and expense; a simple lunch 
in a basket, a short ride in the horse-cars, or a short sail up the Schuylkill, 
and, hey, pfeslof here we are at Fairmount. A day spent in Fairmount creates 
the desire to spend another day there, and when, as sometimes happens, one 



■Sir 










BRIDLE-PATH. 



FAIR MOUNT PARK. 123 

is alone, it creates the desire to spend it with others. He longs to share his 
enjoyment of the woods and waters, the bright sun and the clear sky. His 
nature is enlarged, he knows not how: he becomes kind, benevolent, charitable. 
What has done him good, he thinks, will do others good. What a pity they 
are not here! Croesus can come when he likes; his chariot is harnessed in a 
twinkling. And Dives, too, the fortunate sinner. But Lazarus, and Gaffer, and 
Jack and Gill, and all the rest of the family? It would be jolly to see them 
at Fairmount! They shall come. There are good, liberal, thoughtful people 
who will gladly contribute money to bring it about: Dives and Lazarus will 
do the handsome thing, as they ought. The poor shall come — the young and 
the old: — 

" Young and old come forth to play 
On a sunshine holiday." 

We saw the old folks at their merry-making at Rockland, and enjoyed it 
heartily, but not quite so heartily, when we came to think it over, as the merry- 
making of the children. For some of the old folks, we remembered, were too 
careworn to smile, — even the lilt of the music failed to quicken their pulses. 
But the children, the poorest of them, were as happy as they could be. No 
shadow rested upon their faces, no thought disturbed their minds. Color came 
back to their pale cheeks as they romped on the grass; strength came back to 
their languid limbs as they ran and danced. Crj'ing was turned into laughing 
and singing. Under the trees, along the paths, — they were here, there, and 
everywhere. And more — who knows how many — came. Were there any children 
left in town? Abundant, jubilant, triumphant, they came and went; and when 
the day was ended, when they were back at night, fast asleep in their beds, be 
sure many of them lived over in dreams that happy day at Rockland. Among 
the Christian virtues there is none higher than charity. All charities are good, 
and the best of all are those which are bestowed upon the poor. They are 
always with us, as the Master has told us. He has also told us that it is more 
blessed to give than to receive. Let us do what we can then to lighten their 
lot, especially the lot of children, — litde men and women, whose happiness lies 
in trifles. God bless them all, merry fairies of Fairmount! 

To drop our homily, which would be a sad one if we should allow ourselves 
to follow the little folks back to the lives they have laid down, but will take 
up again when their brief episode of country joyance is over, let us ramble 
elsewhere. It is pleasant to turn our back on the crowd, and seek some 



,24 ^ CENTURY AFTER. 

secluded haunt where we can muse alone, if a solitary humor be upon us, or 
where, if we feel companionable, we can have a cosy chat with a friend. We 
might almost say there are no paths, since none are needed, (no pent-up Utica 
this,) but there are paths, so-called, — bridle-paths, in which we can witch the 
world with noble horsemanship. To be sure, the world will not be there to 
see, but that is not our fault. It is our good fortune, if we are indifferent 
riders, — of whom, by the way, one or two are occasionally to be found here. 




RUSTIC BllIDGE. 



The bridle-path, on a summer day, is an animated and picturesque sight. 
Here, where a solitary horseman may be seen, we are reminded of the opening, 
chapters of Mr. James' novels; the glimpse there of a lady's riding-habit freshens 
the memorj' of Di Vernon. There is something romantic in horsemanship — a 
kind of implied superiority which most of us would be glad to possess. David 



FAIRMOUNT PARK. 



125 



knew what he was about when he painted Napoleon crossing the Alps on a 
fiery charger, and so, no doubt, did JNIurat when he rode like a whirlwind at 
the head of his cavalry. Who would not follow such men to death? This is 
the dark side of horsemanship — ^away with it! The bright side is here, peaceful, 
happy, dignified. Yes, there is a dignity in horsemanship to which we humble 
pedestrians can lay no claim. A man is a man, of course, but he looks more 
of a man on horseback than on foot. It is not merely that he overtops us and 
outspeeds us, the secret of his superiorit)- is deeper, — it is in his mastery of the 
will and energ)^ of the noble animal which he bestrides, and which, strange to 
say, is proud to be bestrode by him; and more proud to have you, madam, on 
his back, for mark the imperious carriage of his head and the hatUeur of his 
step. He seems to know that he bears a precious burden. For precious you 
are, my lady, as you go riding away, with the blood dancing in your veins, and 
the roses blooming in your cheeks, — an armful of happiness for the man who 
loves you. How is it that the laureate describes the fair Guinevere? 



'As she fled fast thro' sun and shade, 
The happy winds upon her played. 
Blowing the ringlet from the braid; 
She looked so lovely as she swayed 

The rein with dainty finger-tips, 
A man had given all other bliss. 
And all his worldly worth for this, 
To waste his whole heart in one kiss 
Upon her perfect lips." 



We are too romantic, you think. It is the privilege of youth, sir; the privilege of 
youth. For since we have been here we have grown young; we have thrown 
away our walking-stick; our wrinkles, if we had any, have become dimples; our 
grizzled (only slightly grizzled) hair has become black; and all because we have 
seen a beaudful woman riding in the bridle-path! Are we in an enchanted forest? 
No, we are in Fairmount. We have strolled from Rockland along the river, 
passing Peters' Island and Ormiston. The river bank on the right has changed 
its character, for, instead of being a precipitous height, such as we saw at the 
steamboat-landing, — a butting precipice of rugged, dark rocks, it rolls away in 
gentle slopes. We have left tall trees behind us, we think, but we perceive that 
they are dwarfed by those which we are now approaching — oaks, chestnuts, pines, 
tulip poplars, to whose branches great vines are clinging, as if to tether them to 
the earth. Or are they ladders, rather, whose leafy rounds are trodden at night 



126 A CENTURY AFTER. 

by woodland spirits, curious to see tlie birds sleeping- in their nests? If there 
are spirits here they must be those which haunted the place when the red men 
possessed it, chiefest among whom was the tricksy Pau-puk-kewis. And why 
not, pray? We have the authority of a great poet for believing that 



"Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth 
Unseen, both when we sleep and when we wake." 



It is an old pagan notion, is it? Perhaps; but it is better than the 
materialism of to-day, — the cold materialism which sees only inanimate matter 
in rocks and trees, the earth and its wilderness of waves. A Greek would have 
seen, or fancied he saw, a Dryad in that magnificent poplar ; and the river there 
(how beautiful it is!) would have given him the vision of a majestic old man, 
crowned with rushes and sedges, leaning over an urn in the woods from which 
its waters were ceaselessly flowing. We merely see a river and a tree. How 
do we know that they are not alive like ourselves? that they are not conscious 
of their existence? Are summer and winter the same to the poplar? The sap 
circulating in its trunk, and the ground frozen around its roots, the bright, warm 
sunlight, and the driving snow and sleet. — are they alike and nothing to it? 
Wordsworth thought otherwise: 



"It is my faith that every flower 
Enjoys the air it breathes." 



But he was a poet, and we are reasonable beings. So be it, beloved Gradgrind. 



"The intelligible forms of ancient poets, 
The fair humanities of old religion, 
The power, the beauty, and the majesty 
That had their haunt in dale, or piny mountain, 
Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring, 
Or chasms and watery depths; all these have vanished: 
They live no longer in the faith of reason!" 



We have passed many shady nooks, wherein we have seen pedestrians 
resting themselves, overtaken by fatigue, which they did not foresee at the 
outset, and by hunger, which happily they did foresee, as the lunches of which 



128 A CENTURY AFTER. 

they are partaking testify. Not having taken the same wise precaution, we 
shall have to go further, but not, we trust, to fare worse. 

We have reached the rustic bridge that crosses a nameless brook, for it is 
no more here, whatever it may be above, and while we linger upon it, looking 
dreamily at the murmuring water on the right, and at the grim old trees on the 
left, a mass of crooked trunks and twisted branches, through which we catch 
glimpses of the shining river, we determine to ascend the ravine. Fairmount, 
we may remark en passant, is rich in ravines, among which should be mentioned 
those at Sweet-brier, Lansdowne, and Belmont. We can see them another 
day, when we visit the West Park: our present business leads us into the grand 
ravine which runs between Ormiston and Edgeley, and is perhaps the most 
striking feature in Fairmount. Look into and along its depths, up its sloping, 
hilly sides, and through its long ranks of trees — is it not a majestic and 
impressive scene? An aisle of God's great forest-temple, it dwarfs all the 
cathedrals that man has reared ; it is worthy of its boundless dome — the sky. 
The noonlight, which is so intense here, loses its brightness as it struggles 
through the multitudinous foliaoe, and g'oes wanderingf amono- the trees and 
slopes. Here and there at the hither end a tree stands out strongly, 
distinguishable from its leafy companions; but as we advance we find ourselves 
in what is neither light nor darkness, but a tender twilight shade hovering about 
the greenery which surrounds us, and of which we may almost be said to be a 
part, so deeply has it interpenetrated our thoughts and feelings. We stand 
amoncf these eisfantic forest fathers like one of themselves. That mag-nificent 
tulip poplar on the other side of the brook, and this grand old fellow here — 
they have strengthened and enlarged us, lesser and weaker children of nature. 
We should like to embrace them, but our arms are too short. We should like 
to shake hands with them, but we cannot reach high enough. The lowest 
branch is full sixty feet above our heads. This is not tall talking by any means, 
but short talking, — it is so far below the magnitude of these old forest kings. 
They wait their poets, who to largeness of imagination will add a greater 
knowledge of nature than most poets possess. The only American singer who 
could make us see them in his song is Mr. Brj'ant, who is at once a naturalist 
and a painter, and whose word-pictures are perfect, accurate in all their details, 
and everj'^where comprehensive and harmonious. His genius would be at home 
among these poplars, pines, chestnuts, beeches, and birches, and would look 
lovingly upon the smallest wild flower at his feet. We city folk, who escape into 
nature less frequently, are not so familiar with forest scenery, and not so happy 



FA Hi MOUNT PARK. 



129 



in describing it. We feel its manifold beauty, however, its grandeur, its 
magnificence, and nowhere more deeply than in this noble ravine. It refreshes 
us to sit at the foot of some great tree, and take in the fullness of our 
surroundings; the crowding multitude of trunks and branches, standing and 
leaning upon and hanging over the grassy hillsides, brightening and darkening 
in the alternating light and shade, — the lofty roof of foliage, intermingled and 
interblended, airy or dense, masses of greenness, — the winding waters of the 
brook, stained with the colors, of the roots they lave above, brawling over the 
stones that have tumbled into their pathway, flowing in still pools and falling in 
little cascades, — leaves stirring and shaking, — birds warblinof their wood-notes 
wild, the buzz and hum of insects in the air, in the j^rass, everywhere. Is it not 
wonderful, beautiful, delightful? Who can express the serene satisfaction which 
possesses the soul in a forest like this — 

"Annihilating all that's made 
To a green thought in a green shade?" 

Who, indeed? An American poet, who ranked among the youngsters thirty 
years ago, (fugacious time!) reflects the feeling of the tuneful brotherhood in 
a little rondelay, which may not be out of place here. How is it the jingle goes? 

"When the summer days are bright and long, 
And the little birds pipe a merr)- song, 
'Tis sweet in the shady woods to lie 
And gaze at the leaves and the twinkling sky, 
Drinking like wine the rare, cool breeze, 
Under the trees, under the trees! 

When winter comes, and the days are dim, 
And the wind is singing a mournful hymn, 
'Tis sweet in the faded woods to stray. 
And tread the dead leaves into the clay. 
Thinking of all life's mysteries, 
Under the trees, under the trees! 

Summer or winter, day or night. 

The woods are an ever-new delight, 

They give us peace, and they make us strong, 

Such wonderful balms to them belong: 

So, living or dying, I take mine case, 

Under the trees, under the trees!" 

A wise conclusion, Master Juventus ! But will your worship be so kind as 
to leave us, and pursue your woodland meditations elsewhere? If you remain 



130 



A CENTURY AFTER. 




ARCHED SPRING. 



Others will come trooping in. We shall have Wordsworth, and Cowper, and 
Thomson, and the rest of them, not forgetting the Master, and my Lord Amiens, 
who, mistaking the place for the forest of Arden, will insist upon tuning his 
merry note. You hear? 



'Come hither, come hither, come hither; 
Here shall he see 
No enemy 
But winter and rough weather." 



FAJRAFOUNT PARK. 



131 



You are good company, all of you, but to-day, you understand, we must do 
what Monsieur Jourdan did all his life without knowing it, — we must talk prose. 
"Give you good den!" 

The mention of winter just now reminds us of what the Rev. William 
Gilpin, an authority on forest scenery, says about the picturesque effects which are 
to be seen in winter woods, and which can be seen here in greater perfection 
than in England. Great beauty, he observes, arises in winter from the different 
tints of the spray. The dark-brown spray of the birch, for instance, has a good 
effect among that of a lighter tinge, and when the forest is deep all this little 
bushiness of ramification has in some degree the effect of foliage. "The tops ol 
trees, likewise, and all their larger limbs, add at this season a rich variety and 
contrast to the forest; the smooth and the rough, the light and the dark, often 
beautifully opposing each other. In winter the stem predominates, as the 
leaf in summer. It is amusing in one season to see the branches losing and 
discovering themselves among the foliage; it is amusing, also, in the other, to 
walk through the desolate forest and see the various combinations of stems, — the 
traversing of branches across each other in so many beautiful directions, — and 
the pains which nature takes in forming a wood as well as a single tree!' (Nature 
has taken infinite pains here, for the whole ravine is as grandly formed as the 
grandest tree in it.) He notes the effect of evergreens, of which there is no lack 
in Fairmount, and paints the hoar frost with a skillful pencil. Here is a picture 
which we have all seen: "In a light hoar frost, before the sun and air begin to 
shake the powder from the trees, the wintry forest is often beautiful, and almost 
exhibits the effect of tufted foliage. As single objects, also, trees under this 
circumstance are curious. The black branches, whose undersides are not covered 
with rime, often make a singular contrast with the whitened spray. Trees of 
minuter ramification and foliage, as the birch, the elm, and the fir, appear under 
this circumstance to most advantage. The ash, the horse-chestnut, and other 
plants of coarser form, have no great beauty. Trees, also, thus covered with 
hoar frost have sometimes, if not a picturesque, at least an uncommon effect, 
where they appear against a lurid cloud, especially when the sun shines strongly 
upon them." The picture is excellent, but it would have been more excellent if 
Mr. Gilpin had lived among such forest scenery as this. What he would have 
said, if he could have seen our woods in their autumnal foliage, we can only 
imagine. He could not have painted them in his glowing pages: Turner 
himself could not have painted the coronations of Fairmount. 

But what with our rambles up hill and down dale and along the brookside 



132 A CENTURY AFTER. 

we have reached the old Arched Spring, which evidently belongs to the Edgeley 
estate, just above. It reminds us of man as we peer into its cold, damp walls, 
(where be the masons who builded them?) of man, whom we have forgotten, 
though we might have remarked his presence in the ravine in the shape of an 
artist sketching our great tulip poplars, or a pair of ramblers like ourselves, or 
a meditative weaver of rhyme, (ah! Juventus, are you still here?) or the fairer 
shape of womankind. Madam, or Miss, we kiss your ladyship's hand ! 

We have emerged from the ravine near the new reservoir, and on the whole 
are rather glad that we are on level ground again, where we can have a broad, 
open view. One must be bred among woods, or he will feel at last a sense 
of confinement in their pillared shadows, which rise like a wall between him and 
the world without. The thought that the whole continent was once covered with 
forests is not a cheerful one to the metropolitan mind, which can but wonder at 
the indomitable courage of the early settlers, and the enterprising hardihood of 
their descendants in pushing their way through the wilderness. Westward, 
westward ever, in the interminable solitudes, — no! Juventus himself, fond of trees 
as he says he is, could never have been a pioneer. Drinking the breeze like 
wine, quotha? Like water, sir, of which, by the way, the great reservoir reminds 
us. It will contain — how many millions of gallons, accurate Gradgrind, man of 
facts and figures? Seven hundred millions, is it? You might sail a fleet in it. 
Hereabouts is the Military Parade Ground, and on parade-days it is brilliant with 
our citizen soldiery. We are peaceful-minded people, cherishing the principles of 
the Founder, inclined to sober and averse to gay colors, averse above all to War; 
but the sight of the lawn covered with soldiers, their uniforms and flashing 
bayonets, infantry and cavalry, marching men and prancing horses,- — do what we 
will, it will rouse the Old Adam in us. Let us enjoy it as a spectacle, and forget 
the stern business which it conceals, and which we all remember too well. It is 
only a peaceful parade. Time was when it meant war, and near by, perhaps here. 
One May morning, less than a hundred years ago, his Excellency General Howe, 
who was then in command of Philadelphia, went marching along the Ridge Road 
(which you know is one of the eastern boundaries of the Park) with four or five 
thousand men, in the direction of Chestnut Hill. A few days before the members 
of his Excellency's staff had given a festival in his honor. They embarked on 
the Delaware a mile or two above the city, and were rowed down the river in 
galleys and boats, with colors streaming and music playing. "God .save the 
King," the hautboys sounded. Their ships of war were decorated, and their 
transports — the harbor was full of them — were crowded with spectators. They 



FA IRMO UNT PARK. 



133 



landed, this band of noble gendemen, and marched between lines of infantry 
and cavalry, with all the standards of the army, to a green lawn, where, in the 
presence of their misses, they raised a 
throne, upon which one of these light dames - ^ \_ 

sat, and they held a tournament; knights -J-'^^-' ^ 

and squires, the charging of steeds 
and splintering of spears, man's 
valor and woman's smile, — it was 
a brave and beautiful si^ht. 
Behold it and tremble, you Con- 
tinental rebels! Then under a 
triumphal arch to a large house. 




STRAWBERRY HEIGHTS. 



where they danced 
and gambled. There 
were two thousand 
guineas to be won 
and lost. At mid- 
night a supper was 
sen-ed, by the light 
ot twelve hundred wax candles, and 
to the sound of one hundred instru- 
ments. Pop went the corks, and every 
glass was filled. Loyal toasts were 
drank: "God save the King!" "Hip, 
hip, hurrah!" Then to the ball-room 
again, these roystering gentlemen and 
lightsome ladies, where they danced 
till the sun was an hour high. A 
merry night and morning. But this 
morning, it was business and not 



134 A CENTURY AFTER. 

pleasure which sent the British marching up the Ridge Road. Washington, who 
was at Valley Forge, had sent young Lafayette with two or three thousand men 
to make a sortie, and if the British should evacuate the city, as seemed likely, 
to harass their rear-guard. He crossed the Schuylkill, and took a post of 
observation at Barren Hill, just above the upper boundary of the Park. The 
movement reached the ears of his Excellency, and the night after the festival he 
sent General Grant with four or five thousand men to get in the rear of Lafayette 
by circuitous ways. Lafayette was surprised, but not disconcerted, for seeing the 
situation at a glance he sent small parties into the woods to present themselves 
as the heads of attacking columns, while he quietly stole away below to Matson's 
Ford. He crossed while Grant was preparing to fight. His Excellency waited 
in vain to hear the sound of his guns. There was no fight, there were no 
prisoners, so he marched down the Ridge Road again, — he and General Clinton 
and Knyphausen and his soldiers, whose business was not to die then. Four 
days later his Excellency sailed for England, and in less than a month the 
British army, Hessians, tories, and what not, were crossing the Delaware. 

One would like to know about the old houses at Edgeley and Woodford; 
whether there is any story connected with them, historic or otherwise. Who the 
former occupants were, how they lived, what they did, and so on. This house 
at Edgeley, towards which we are now walking, — a quaint mansion, with a half- 
circled porch, graceful columns, and old-time carvings, — who dwelt there, say fifty 
years ago? 

"All houses wherein men have lived and died 
Are haunted houses." 

Who haunts this house? If it be the spirits of its early dwellers, who w^ere 
gentlemen and ladies, without doubt, they turn up their noses, if they have any, 
at the smell of trade in its chambers. We can procure there the berry of 
Araby, or the shrub of China. Are you a disciple of Confucius, or a follower of 
Mohammed? Which do you prefer — Old Mocha, or Young Hyson? Ghosts of 
Edgeley, you never in your life-time expected that signs of "Coffee and Tea" 
would stare you out of countenance in your stately old home. "To what base 
uses may we return, Horatio!" But we forget: you eschewed profane plays for 
the goodly meditations of George Fo.x and John Woolman. What do you read 
now, — what airy, spiritual volumes? And what do you drink, — anything better 
than coffee and tea? They disdain to answer. There is an air of hospitality 
about the grounds, for see, in the shadow of those gigantic tulip poplars and 



FA in MOUNT FARK. 



135 




oaks, groups of hungry '&S^i 
pedestrians are seated at ;.i;»f 
tables partaking of lunch 
or dinner. Cartes, they 
have a magnificent din- 
ing-room. 

There is a noble 
group of tulip poplars ' 

on the edge of the Concourse 
round which we are now walk- 
ing. We can sit on the grass 
in their shade, and obtain a 



STRAWBERRY HEIGHTS — LOOKING DOWN. 



136 A CENTURY AFTER. 

better view of the Schuylkill than any we have yet had. Here they are, and 
here we are, on the green carpet of Edgeley, woven year after year in the 
invisible loom of spring. We look down the river, and behold in the distance, 
rising above the trees, massed together, the tops of the Centennial Buildings, 
glittering like the domes of some far-away city in a strange land. Turner might 
have painted them, we think, if any one could. They are unsubstantial, airy, 
dreamy. Do poets ever build such cities in their dreams? Looking up the river 
we take in its broad, lake-like sweep, and the slopes along its western bank, 
stretching upward and onward until they are lost in the summit of Mount 
Prospect. On the hither side we see Strawberry Heights, and the monuments 
on Laurel Hill, thickly clustering like the front of some great white marble 
cathedral. We are between two cities, — the noisy city below, the silent city 
above, — the living and the dead. 

Who shall tell the Tale of these Two Cities? If there are tongues in trees, 
can we not hear their whispers? If there are books in the running brooks, and 
sermons in stones, can we not read them? Woods, waters, rocks of Fairmount, 
what tales have you to tell us? We can tell yow, the leaves murmur, of what 
we saw below us in the olden time. Of gentlemen in cocked hats and wigs, 
coats with padded skirts and large cuffs, shirts with hand-ruffles, closely-fitting 
breeches, silk stockings, and shoes with silver buckles. Of gentlemen in gold- 
laced hats, scarlet vests and breeches, and long queues hanging down their backs 
in black silk bags. Of ladies in white caps and flowered chintzes, stiff stays and 
enormous hoops, white silk stockings, and little black, high-heeled shoes. Of 
ladies in brocade and satin, their heads great towers of crisp and frizzled curls. 
They are gone, the trees murmur, gone like the leaves which will soon be 
dropping from us: gone like the red men whose hunting-grounds were here. 
Hold! you garrulous old trees, we are tired of the noble savage. And you, 
beautiful river, flowing so smoothly between your hilly banks, past your bridges, 
and through the populous town, read to us what is written in your bright and 
merry books. Of the Founder in his stately barge with six oars, manned by 
rowers who pull him along your waters with his broad pennant flying. Of 
British soldiers rowing their officers across. Of ladies and gentlemen sailing up 
and down from country seat to country seat. Of boats putting off from boat- 
houses, and skimming hither and thither. Of the bridge which winter throws 
over you, and the multitudes who glide thereon, darting about like birds. Of the 
ice-holes, and those who disappear therein! Yes, the river ripples, and of the 
light canoes — No more of that, old gossip, the aborigines have gone. 



FAIRMOUNT PARK. 



137 



We have clambered up Strawberry Hill, and reached its spacious mansion. 
If the ghosts of Edgeley turn up their noses at the traffic which is carried on 
in their old home, pray, what do the ghosts of the Strawberry Mansion do? A 
tavern! what is the world coming to? Are there not taverns enough already— 
the Crooked Billet Inn, the Pewter Platter Tavern, the City Tavern, the St. 
George and the Dragon? Sofdy, gendy, ye gendemanly old ghosts. You 
belong to the eighteenth century, (do you go back earlier?) we belong to the 
nineteenth. We are no longer under the dominion of his Majesty George the 
Third, (God save the King!) he has been dead this fifty years. You forget that 
you are dead. But we are living, and hungry, and by your leave (or without it, 
sirs) we will have a snack in your chambers. 

Dinner finished, we stroll to the edge of the bluff, and, leaning against the 
rustic railing, look sheer down upon the drive below. It lies in sunshine Avith 
the shadows of the trees on its outer border painted darkly across it; carriages 
dash up and down, horsemen canter, and along the grassy border, under the trees, 
we see the moving figures of women and children. The outlook is magnificent. 
The eye takes in at one sweep the broad, beautiful river down to the Reading 
Bridge, the Concourse, Peters' Island, and the banks on both sides, with all their 
wealth of forestry and shrubbery. The sun shines, the waters flash, and the 
white clouds go sailing away on high. The wind blows, the leaves twinkle, and 
hidden away somewhere a merry bird sings. Who talked of grizzled locks? 
Who talked of growing old? Age is not, but everywhere Youth, everlasdng 
Youth! Juvenhis Mwidif 










LAUREL HILL AND VICINITY. 




-*^' -^ ' -'' ^ ^ ^HAT shall we do 

with our dead? 
^i^^^^f''■' It was a question which had to be 
If :;;^''^ answered from the moment that 

Cain called his father and his 
mother, and his sisters Adah and Zillah, 
to the cold body of his slain brother Abel, 
with the terrible exclamation, "Death is 
in the world!" There were three ways 
'^ of disposing of the dead among the ancients — burying 
them, burning them, and embalming them. The first, 
there is reason to think, was the earliest method. That 
it was among the Hebrews we know from the book of Genesis, 
the writer of which describes the negotiations between Abraham 
and the children of Heth over the dead body of his wife Sarah. 
"I am a stranger and a sojourner with you: give me a possession of a burying- 
place with you, that I may bury my dead out of my sight;" and they answered, 
"Hear us, my lord: thou art a mighty prince among us; in the choice of our 
sepulchres bury thy dead: none of us shalt withhold from thee his sepulchre, but 
that thou mayest bury thy dead." But Abraham would not: he could not bury 
his dead among their dead, so he asked them to entreat Ephron, the Hittite, 



LAUREL HILL AND VICINITY. 



139 



that he would sell him the cave of Machpelah, which was in the end of his field, 
for a grave for Sarah. And Ephron answered, "Nay, my lord, hear me: the 
field give I thee, and the cave that is therein, I give it thee; in the presence of 
the sons of my people give I it thee: bury thy dead." But Abraham would 
not take it. "I will give thee money for the field; take it of me, and I will 
bury ni) dead there." Four hundred shekels of silver were weighed out and 
given to Ephron, and the field, and the cave, and all the trees that were in the 
field, and in "all the borders round about, were made sure unto Abraham as a 
possession in the presence of the children of Heth. "And after this Abraham 
buried Sarah his wife in the cave of the field of Machpelah, before Mamre: the 
same is Hebron in the land of Canaan." Dear, simple, divine old penman! 

The practice of burning is of great antiquity and no slender extent, as Sir 
Thomas Browne points out in his discourse on Urn-Burial. Hellenic tradition 
ascribes its origin to Hercules, who, having taken an oath to King Lycimnius to 
bring back from war his son, burned his body after he had fallen, and brought 
back the ashes in proof of his faith. Grecian funerals are nobly described in 
Homer. Who does not remember the obsequies of Patroclus, and Achilles, and 
the pyre of poor, brave Hector before the gates of Troy? There was a long 
continuance of the practice in the inward countries of Asia; it extended, also, 
far west, among the Celts, Sarmatians, Germans, Gauls, Danes, Swedes, and 
Norwegians. The ancients buried their dead outside their cities. The Romans 
were forbidden by a law of the Twelve Tables to bury within their walls. The 
usual places of interment were in the suburbs, and along the waysides. ''Siste, 
Viator," the silent stone commanded. They believed that even the neighborhood 
of the dead was defiling, and they knew that there was danger to the living in 
their corruption, and that their buildings were not safe from their funeral fires. 

We are on the way to Laurel Hill, but we will halt a moment, and read 
you what Sir Thomas says about these dead and gone old Romans. We have 
his book with us: what book more fitting for a journey to the silent city yonder? 
Hearken! "Men have lost their reason in nothing so much as their religion, 
wherein stones and clouts make martyrs; and since the religion of one seems 
madness unto another, to afford an account or rationale of old rites, requires 
no rigid reader. That they kindled the pyre aversely, or turning their face from 
it, was a handsome symbol of unwilling ministration; that they washed their 
bones with wine and milk, that the mother wrapped them in linen and dried 
them in her bosom, the first fostering part and place of their nourishment; that 
they opened their eyes towards heaven before they kindled the fire, as the place 



I40 



A CENTURY AFTER. 



of their hopes or original, were no improper ceremonies. Their last valediction 
thrice uttered by the attendants was also very solemn, and somewhat answered 
by Christians, who thought it too little, if they threw not the earth thrice upon 
the interred body. That in strewing their tombs the Romans affected the rose, 
the Greeks, amaran- 
thus and myrtle: that 
the funeral pyre con- 
sisted of sweet fuel, 
cypress, fir, larix, yew, 
and trees perpetually 
verdant, lay silent 
expressions of their 
surviving hopes; 
wherein Christians, 
which deck their 
coffins with bays have 
found a more elegant 
emblem. For that 
tree, seeming dead, 
will restore itself from 
the root, and its dry 
and exuccous leaves 
resume their verdure 
again; which, if we 
mistake not, we have 
also observed in firs. 
Whether the planting 
of yew in church- 
yards hold not its 
original from ancient 
funeral rites, or as 
an emblem of resur- 
rection from its per- 
petual verdure, may 
also admit conject- 
ure." The dead that 
the old Hebrews 




L.VUREL HILL LANLING. 



buried in the earth 
crumbled to dust: the 
ashes that the old 
Greeks and Romans 
secured in urns crum- 
bled to dust; but the 
dead that the old 
Egyptians embalmed 
remain. "Thus I 
make myself immor- 
tal," said a Hindoo, 
burning upon a pyre 
in Athens. "Thus 
we make our dead 
immortal," said the 
Egyptians, in thought 
if not in words. They 
have left imperishable 
monuments in their 
pyramids, — moun- 
tains of stone enclos- 
ing the mummies of 
their kings. How 
many men were em- 
ployed, and how much 
time was spent upon 
the great pyramids of 
Cheops? The cause- 
way for the stone, 
they tell us, was built 
by a press-gang of 
one hundred thou- 
sand men, relieved 



LAUREL HILL AND VICINITY. 



141 



every three months for ten years, or in all four millions of men, and twenty 
more years, at the rate of three hundred and sixty thousand, giving over seven 
millions more men! Thirty years, and eleven millions of men! — no wonder 
Cheops was hated, and was buried in a subterranean chamber encircled by the 
Nile. The wonder was that there was anything left of him to embalm. "But all 
was vanity, feeding the wind, and foll}\ The Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses 
or time hath spared, avarice now consumeth. Mummy is become merchandise: 
Mizraim cures wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for balsams." 

Siste, Viator. Our walk along the river drive has brought us to the steam- 
boat-landing, whence ascends the road that leads on this side into Laurel Hill. 
If we had proposed to go thither by the horse-cars, we should probably have 
turned from the Ridge Road, and strolled for a few moments around the 
Church of St. James the Less. The sight of its walls mantled widi vines and 
creepers, and surrounded with trees and flowers, would have been pleasant after 
the monotony of streets and houses, and the glimpse of the little head-stones 
scattered about its cemetery would have prepared us for the solemn splendors 
of Laurel Hill. But we did not go citj'ward; we came riverwards, and so the 
church of the good Apostle remains unvisited, and the name of the Christian 
gentleman by whom it was chiefly erected remains unsung. 

We ascend the lane, passing under the arched stone bridge which unites 
North and South Laurel Hill, and turning to the left we enter the former. 
The cathedral front, which we saw below, is now a multitude of pillars, shafts, 
and obelisks. We might fancy ourselves among the ruins of a temple, but there 
are no signs of ruin: the stones are not crumbling, the weeds are not growing 
in the unroofed aisles. It is a city in which we are walking, — a city of the 
dead. They are in their houses, and will not come forth. They are not to be 
tempted out by the sun. They care not for the flowers. It was so yesterday, 
it will be so to-morrow: will it be so always? Love has knocked at their doors 
in an agony of tears, calling, calling, but they have not answered. Mothers 
and fathers have demanded them, husbands and wives have demanded them, 
children have demanded them, but in vain. Their dear ones have come, have 
descended to them, have lain down beside them, but they have never, never 
greeted them, never stretched out their arms to them, — never, never! Oh, 
populous city! will nothing break your silence? Oh, speechless inhabitants! will 
nothing persuade you to speak? Nothing — nothing! Peace, wild dreamer; peace, 
sad heart. Not such should be thy thoughts, thy words, thy emotion. We wrong 
the dead, we wrong the living, by endless lamentations. Nothing that is so 



A CENTURY AFTER. 




i^^^i^^^f ^^^^^ 



CHURCH OF ST. JAMES THE LESS. 



universal as death can be unhappy. The poor pagans, as we think them, — 
looking down upon them from the heights of our fancied superiority, — the poor, 
blind pagans felt this, and were consoled. Death was not a skeleton to them, 
as to the gloomy ascetics who disgraced the first centuries of Christianity, — 
emaciated hermits and flagellating monks, — but a beautiful boy with an inverted 
torch — Genius of Death. And their last solemn valediction, thrice uttered, was 
a pious wish, " Vale. Nos te, ordine quo Natura permiserit cuncti seguaimir." 
Have we less philosophy than they had, less trust in the Unseen and Unknown? 
Why should we seek to clothe death with unnecessary terrors, and to spread 
horror around the tombs of those we love? It is the question of a great writer, 
and we are beginning to answer it, not as we must have done forty years 
ago, when intramural burials prevailed in every great city, but as we do at 
Laurel Hill, where we honor the dead by beautifying their last abodes. 



LAUREL IILLL AND VICLNITY. 143 

It is beautiful here, — beautiful. Nothing is left wild, except along the steep, 
wooded river-banks; nature has been translated into art. The walks g-o winding- 
along like rhythmic lines, and, whether they curve away, as they do jonder, or 
stretch straightly before us, as they do here, the lines have fallen in pleasant 
places. We wait a moment to let the vision pass in our minds and live in our 
memories, but we might as well have walked on. We cannot retain it: it will 
not enter. A stretch of sloping and level lawn, green with summer grass, 
studded with trees, sprinkled with flowers, and populous with monuments. 
Graceful shafts of marble, whiter than snow, relieved against the blue sky; 
shafts of gray, veined granite, towering from their bases; pillars of reddish- 
brown Scotch granite, polished like crystal; urns and head-stones gleaming and 
glimmering among the shrubbery; — a multitudinous dream in stone. 

If we saw nature in her wild magnificence in the ravine and in the slopes 
and woods along the river, we see her here in her simple beauty, clothed in 
her garden raiment. Who shall depict the trees which we are approaching and 
which we have passed since our entrance, — singly or in little groups, their form 
and color, the shape of their trunks, the interblending of their branches and 
limbs and foliage? Farther on we see tall oaks and beeches and pines, but 
here their leafy fellows are of a lesser growth and greater cultivation. The 
most beautiful are, perhaps, the upright junipers, which are light, airy, and 
graceful, and which resemble needles in their delicate green slenderness. If the 
birch be, as Coleridge says, "the lady of the woods," to what shall we liken 
these fairer members of the sylvan sisterhood? They are more than ladies, 
more than court ladies; they are princesses, young, virginal, beautiful. Speaking 
of birches reminds us that we shall pass some that are surprisingly like 
imitations of themselves in marble, they are so white and so polished. Select 
your favorite evergreen, — any of the rhododendron family, mountain laurel, rose 
bay, what you like, — any of the arbor vitce family {Thuja occidentalis, if you wish 
to hear its learned name), box, yew, or what not, you shall find it before long 
growing in hallowed ground. For such are the enclosures around, sacred to 
loving hearts who come hither in the summer days to meditate by the graves 
of their dead, seated in bloom under the everlasting heavens. They bring 
flowers with them, for note that pretty little vase in which the lily has not 
yet faded. Painters, especially flower-painters, may, and probably do, come to 
freshen their knowledge of color, which is abundant here at the proper seasons. 
As summer draws to a close, nature scatters her largess royally, in geraniums 
and honeysuckles, in the brilliant scarlet sage and white sweet alyssum, and in 



144 



A CENTURY AFTER. 



a profusion of roses. Does the Great Mother remember her children who are 
sleeping here, when she spreads her coverlet of flowers above their beds? It 
would almost seem so, she is so bountiful, so opulent. Nor does she lavish 
flowers alone, but all manner of graceful, flowering shrubs and trailing ivies, (let 
them clamber freely over the shafts and obelisks, and around the mortuary 
urns,) and the many-colored gorgeous leaves of the coleus. Yes, the Good 
Mother remembers and loves the sleepers at Laurel Hill. What was it that 
Shelley wrote about the Protestant Cemetery at Rome, in which the dust of 
Keats has mouldered for over fifty years? "It might make one in love with 
death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place." 

We asked before, you may remember, if there were sermons in stones ? 
There are, we answer, here, and they are worth laying to heart. They remind 




BRIDGE CONNECTING NORTH AND SOUTH LAUREL HILL. 



US of the uncertain tenure by which we hold our lives; the thread of the spider, 
glistening in the morning dew, is cord, is cable, to it. They remind us that no 
age, no station, is exempt from death. Here- are children who died in their 
cradles, and old, old men, who outlived all their children ; hands that dropped 
the ratde, hands that trembled with palsy, and hands, perhaps, that griped the 
poor, — hard hands that gathered gold. Who was that pursy person that sits 
in bronze on the top of his monument? Shall we ask Abraham or Dives? 
Neither: we will not seek to disclose his merits, nor draw his frailties (if he 
had any) from their dread abode. (Who are we that we should judge our 



LAUREL HILL AND VICINITY. 



145 



fellow-men ?) Whoever he was, he thought highly of himself, or we should not 
have his effigy there, sitting bareheaded, in the sun, in the rain, in the snow, the 
long year through. Does he never want to step down and out? Is it too much 
to say that that monument is a standing sermon against ostentation? Compare 
it with the little stone which marks the grave of Pennsylvania's great soldier. 
It is pathetic in its simplicity — its humility. Gettysburg, the Wilderness, before 
Richmond. Uncover, and salute the dead! 

Another soldier reposes at Laurel Hill. A young Scotch surgeon, who 
fought at Culloden on the side of the Chevalier, he emigrated to Virginia, 
where he volunteered to accompany the expedition which Braddock led against 
Fort Du Ouesne, and where he, doubtless, met a young surveyor named George 
Washington, and his vouno- friend Georore Warrinoton, of whom we have all 
heard. Wounded at the disastrous battle of Monongahela and unable to keep 
up with the fugitives, he wandered alone through the wilderness, exhausted by 
sickness, hunger, and fatigue. He was spared to fight again, — this time against 
the British; for the whilom young surgeon, now a Continental brigadier-general of 
fifty-seven or thereabouts, marched away to Princeton one cold winter morning 
and gave them battle. His men broke and fled: he remained. His blood was 
up. Dismounted and surrounded by the enemy, he refused quarter; defending 
himself with his sword, he was knocked down, stabbed through and through 
with bayonets, and left for dead. He lived nine days, indomitable to the last. 
Honor to brave old Hugh Mercer ! 

Other soldiers are here, and as we call the roll of their names we seem 
to hear, in thought, the thunder of by-gone batdes, and to see the phantoms of 
contending armies. General Frank Patterson sleeps beneath his monument at 
North Laurel Hill. No monument commemorates General Charles F. Smith, 
nor does he need one, for, standing by his lowly grave, we recall the fields in 
which he fought, — Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, Monterey, Contreras, 
Cherubusco. He was noted for valor in Mexico; and who more conspicuous 
than he at Fort Donelson? No need to raise a stone or carve a line, — we 
leave him alone in his glory. Other soldiers are here. Thou art here. Colonel 
Ulrich Dahlgren, so brave, so early lost. What battle memories cling to thy 
name, — Maryland Heights, Cross Keys, Bull Run, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, 
Gettysburg. Who knows that Gettysburg would have been won it thou and 
thy brave troopers had failed to capture that Confederate rider, and bear his 
dispatches to General Meade? W^ith Sigel, Fremont, Hooker, Meade, Pleasanton, 
Kilpatrick, — wherever honor was thou wert there. Wherever danger was thou 



LAUREL HILL AND VICJNLTY. 



147 



wert there, — once too often. On a dark March night, when surrounded by 
enemies, fighting thy way out, the bullets went through thee. Slain at twenty-two! 
Poor, brave boy! And here, too, sleeps his father, Rear Admiral Dahlgren, a 
sailor from boyhood, whom beleaguered, defiant Charleston will long remember. 
And here another great sailor, Commodore Isaac Hull. Who did not read, in 
his younger years, with a thrill of admiration, of the memorable sea-fight between 
the Constitution and the Guerriere? How the English frigate opened fire at 
a long range at five o'clock in the afternoon of an August day, sixty-three years 
ago? How, at a little past six, the Constitution closed upon her, and they fought, 
yard-arm to yard-arm, at less than pistol range? In ten minutes the mizzen-mast 
of the Guerriere is shot away. The sea is so heavy and the fire of the musketry 
so severe that neither attempts to board. Down comes the foremast of the 
Guerriere, carrying away the mainmast. She is a wreck: she surrenders. 
"When brave Dacres came on board to deliver up his sword," — was that the 
way the song ran? At daylight next day there are four feet of water in her 
hold. In the afternoon she blows up. Hurrah for the Constitution! Hurrah 
for Commodore Hull! 

Nor does it end here, — the thunder of the brave sea-fight, — for we hear it 
again at the grave of Colonel Charles Ellet. Not on the rouo-h Atlantic now, 
nor in the olden time, but fifty years later, far inland on the Mississippi, off 
Memphis, where the "Queen of the West" goes crashing through fire and smoke, 
sinking the Confederate fleet. It is all over now, God be praised! For not 
only at Memphis, as on the day after the fight, but everywhere throughout the 
land, the firmamental stripes and bright old stars are floating. But peace, as 
the poet tells us, hath her victories no less renowned than war, and among her 
great commanders there is no higher name than that of Ellet. It was he who 
spanned the Schuylkill for us, building the first suspension bridge in America. 
He spanned the Niagara below the Falls, the Ohio at Wheeling. He laid out 
the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad; indeed, there is scarcely a Middle or Western 
State which does not furnish ample and lasting evidence of his skill — his genius. 

Literature lies at North Laurel Hill in the dust of Joseph C. Neal, journalist 
and humorist, whose nimble fingers dropped the pen nearly thirty years ago, 
and at South Laurel Hill, under the monument of Robert T. Conrad, poet and 
dramatist, and once upon a time mayor of the good city of Penn. Nor should 
we forget Charles Thompson, who, coming hither from Ireland at the age of 
eleven, became a pedagogue, a merchant, and finally Secretary of the American 
Congress from 1774 to 1789; a man of probity and learning, whom John 



148 



A CENTURY AFTER. 



Adams called "the Sam Adams of Philadelphia," and the Indians, who knew 
him well, "the Man of Truth." He lived to the ripe old age of ninety-five, and 
added to the world's library of theology by a translation from the Septuagint 
of the Old and New Testaments. Let us add to the list the name of Thomas 
McKean, who, if not a man of letters, in a strict sense, certainly wrote his 
name to a very important manuscript — the Declaration of Independence. 

Our ramble has broug^ht us to the orrave of Kane. Uncover before that iron 
door, before those portals, through which, feet foremost, eighteen years ago, into 
the chamber beyond, built in the everlasting rock, under the shadow of a great 
oak and a great beech, which send their roots abroad, (but not to pierce his 
mould,) passed all that was mortal of Elisha Kent Kane! What memories crowd 
upon us as we recall the man and his works! Memories of travel the world 
over, — among the Andes, among the cave-temples of India, among the Philippines, 
among the Himalayas, among the mosques of Persia, the pyramids of Egypt, 
the fanes of Greece, the churches of Italy, France, England, home! Memories 
of battle-fields in Mexico, of the blue Mediterranean, of unknown northern seas 
that lock up in their icy wastes the secret of the Pole! Will he find the great 
navigator whose sail was last seen by white men eight years before, and who has 
not been heard from since? No, he will not find him, or his men. But he will 
find Death. For it will track him there, track him home, track him to Havana, 
where it will knock at his door (O pale Spirit, dark Spirit!) and smite him into 
dust. Gone at thirty-seven — fatal age for the world's great men. Rest, great 
traveler! Sleep, poor sufferer! Your last bed is at home, — here on the green 
hillside, under the waving trees, in sight of the flowing river. Home, and forever! 

You noticed Old Mortality as we entered. It is a pleasant reminder of the 
genius of Scott, and not less pleasant in that its like, in life, will never be seen 
here. The names of our dead will not be obliterated, even by that veritable 
Old Mortality — Time. 







MARKETRY. 




MARKET HOUSE, SECONU AND PINE STREETS. 



WHAT shall we eat, and where shall we get it? These questions answered 
themselves when the world was young; for wherever men were then, 
there their market was. The tiller of the q-round found it in the fields, and in 
the trees along the wayside. The herdsman found it in his herds, — in his sheep 
and lambs, his goats and kids. Wherever he went they went: his trisking. 
bleating market stretched before him in the green pastures. The market of the 
hunter was concealed in the woods, which his spear and arrow thinned of their 
dangerous as well as harmless inhabitants. Markets fluttered in the fowler's 
net, and wriggled on the fisher's hook. Thus it was in tlie simple, primitive 
time, when the fathers of the world were young. But when they congregated in 
communities, when the family had become a tribe, and the tribe a people, — when 
the fisher had dropped his line, and the fowler his net, when the hunter had cast 



150 A CENTURY AFTER. 

aside his arrow and spear, the shepherd his crook, and the husbandman his spade, 
when the Nimrods of antiquity began to build Babels, — all this was changed. 
Of course, a large portion of mankind still pursued their old occupations; not 
as before, for themselves alone, but for the inhabitants of the cities, who, in 
exchange for their flocks and herds, their game and fish, gave them their cunning 
handiwork, — the artificer in brass, weapons and armor; the weaver, the fabric 
woven in his looms; the jeweler, ornaments of beaten silver and gold. Art and 
Nature bartered together, as they have done ever since. Art sat in her cities 
demanding food, and Nature came from the fields and the woods, from the air 
and the sea, and brought it to her. This, you see for yourself, is how marketry 
beg;an. 

No doubt the historians could tell us something about the early markets 
of the world; for, at last, after centuries of solemn pomposity, which seldom 
descended to anybody less dignified than kings and warriors, — anydiing so 
undignified, in short, as the lives of the oi pollio, they have condescended to 
consider that as not entirely beneath their august notice. Many, or no, thanks, 
which shall it be? We shall not go to the historians, however, for entre nous, 
we believe that the best of them deal less in fact than in fancy. We can draw 
upon our imagination as well as they can. We can imagine the country folk 
swarming to Babylon, to Nineveh — any old city you like — with their grain, their 
wine, their oil, in carts, on asses, on the backs of camels, with dates and figs 
and honey, the beasts of the earth, the birds of the air, the tenants of the 
deep. We can imagine them crossing rivers, crossing deserts, crossing plains, 
swarming like bees to the great hives of their fellows, day and night, around 
the city walls, in the city gates, through the city streets, — an endless procession 
of food-bringers, worshipers of Ceres and Pan and Diana and Neptune, not 
forgetting one god who has outlasted all these old divinities, and is now potent 
still — Mammon! You see how easy it is to fancy history! History, in fact, is 
not quite so easy; but not difficult, though, when you come to the really historic 
times, as those of Greece and Rome. 

For example: The Agora, or Greek market, was divided into parts for the 
different sorts of marketry, and these divisions were named after the articles 
vended therein. The signal for opening the market was the sound of a bell, 
which drew thither an eager crowd. Whether meat and poultry were sold 
in the same division as fish, which ranked among the delicacies, is not clear. 
Bread was sold there, though for the most part it was carried to the houses of the 
Athenians; and wine, which was brought from the country in carts and poured 



MARKETRY. 



151 



into amphora;, was sold there. There were places where women sold garlands 
of myrtle and flowers; and other places where they sold ribbons and fillets for 
the head. These were collected in one market. But there were special markets, 
so to say, for the different kinds of marketry, — markets for onions, for nuts, for 
apples, for spices, for perfume, for books, for slaves, even for old clothes. 
(Perhaps the last were in the Hebrew quarter of Athens.) Everybody went 



-M^Iv-ra^ 



r^hSff^'-'i 






i^4^S" 




OLD WATCHMAN. 



to the market. It was a place of public resort. Statesmen, poets, artists, wits, 
sophists, philosophers went there. Socrates went there, Olympiad after Olympiad, 
pardy, maybe, to escape the vituperations of his much-provoked and provoking 
wife, but chiefly to hear himself talk. He questioned all, and confounded all: 
nobody was a match for him. And with him sometimes was that light-minded 
young person, that merry, mad wag, diat extravagant, reckless rogue, Alcibiades, 



152 



A CENTURY AFTER. 



who cut off the tail of his dog, as you know, to give the Athenians something to 
talk about. We went to market in the forenoon, if we were Athenians, or 
we sent our slaves instead, sometimes our female slaves. We never brought our 
marketry home: it was infra dig. If any one doubted the fact, we referred him 
to the little treatise written by Lyncius of Samos for the guidance of purchasers 
of marketry, and he was floored at once. If he came up smiling, but still 
doubtful, we handed him over to the agorancnni, whose business it was to see 
that all the rules and regulations of the market were enforced. They were 
stern men, those agoranomi; they inspected everything, regulated the prices 
and quantities of merchandise, punished those who cheated with light weights, 
punished us, their fellow-citizens, by inflicting fines, and our slaves and foreigners 
by whipping them, then and there. Did they never consider old Socrates a pubHc 
nuisance, and order him to move on? Perhaps: but history is silent. Anyhow, he 

kept on confounding people with his chatter, till that little 
cup of hemlock stopped his tongue and his marketry. 

The Fora, or Roman market, which was called Macellum, 

-W" you may like to know, after one Macellus, whose house 

'1 once stood upon its site, was upon the bank of the Tiber. 

* It was a series of markets, rather than a single market. 

^- There was an ox and cow market, in which stood the 

"% brazen statue of a bull; a swine market, a fish market, 

4= (Oh, the fish market!) a vegetable market, a pastry and 

V* confection market, and a market for slaves, of course. It 

ji^^ was in the slave market, you remember, that the young 

monk, Gregory, saw amid a crowd of black 

Africans, tawny Syrians and Egyptians, and 

olive-complexioned Greeks, three little boys, 

with fair red-and-white faces, blue eyes, and 

flaxen hair. "Who are these?" asked his future 

Holiness, and the slave-merchant answered, 

"Angli." "No," he said, "Non angli, sed angeli." 

What should we have eaten, if we had 

been Romans ? That would have depended 

upon our rank, and the state of our exchequer. 

The poor ate coarse porridge and the common 

sort of vegetables, cabbages, turnips, radishes, 

'HOT corn!" leeks, garlics, etc., and the smaller fry of fish. 




MARKETRY. 153 

They never dreamed of the possibiHty of tasting a sizable mullet. They were 
mad, those old Roman gluttons, about their mullets, surmullets, and what not. 
The mullet was never a large fish, the average weighing about two pounds. A 
three-pound mullet was an object of admiration; a four-pound mullet entailed 
ruin on its reckless purchaser. Lucius Annaeus Seneca, who educated the 
hopeful Nero, and wrote little philosophical papers on poverty and the kindred 
virtues upon a table of silver, — Seneca, we say, mentions a surmullet, which 
was presented to Tiberius, and which, in a moment of imperial economy, he 
sent to the market to be sold. Apicius and Augustus, both wanting it, went 
on biddino- against each other, till it was knocked down to the last for five 
thousand sesterces, say two hundred dollars. Asinus (the happily-named) paid 
three hundred and twenty dollars for one in the reign of Caligula. Yes, they 
were fond of fish at any price. They ate the 7nurcBna, a salt-water eel, which 
was caught in the Straits of Sicily; the rhambus, a flounder, which was brought 
from Ravenna, besides those which were kept in ponds, — pike and the like. 
They ate salted and preserved fish, from Sardinia and the Spanish coast, and 
all manner of shell-fish, beginning with the oyster, and ending with snails and 
slugs. They zooidd have fish. They built great ponds, in which the)- preserved 
them, — one Lucius Lucullus going so far as to have a canal dug through a 
mountain to supply his ponds with salt water. A soldier and a glutton, he 
passed his last days among poets and artists and philosophers, now at his villas 
at Tusculum and Neapolis, and now at his house and gardens in Rome, giving 
quiet little suppers, that cost only eight or ten thousand dollars. They had 
eating on the brain, especially eating fish. Their mullets and surmullets were 
brought from afar, and as they did not thrive well in ponds the greatest pains 
were taken to make them do so. It was a luxurious whim with the givers of 
their great feasts, to have them swim from the ponds into their banqueting- 
rooms, that the guests might see them as they ate, and watch their colors as 
they lay dying in glass dishes. Seneca says that they swam in under the table, 
and were caught there in order to be placed upon it. They were not fresh, 
you see, unless they were put alive into the hands of the guests who were to 
devour them. They were beautiful as they lay dying, for death brought out 
their most brilliant scarlet tints. They loved their fish, these tender-hearted old 
pagans, — one Crater Hortensius actually shedding tears at the death of one ot 
his eels ! They had snail preserves, and preserves of birds, — common poultry, 
fig-thrushes, guinea-fowls, pheasants, and peacocks. The first who gave his 
guests roasted peacocks imported them from Samos. Those Roman feasts — 



154 



A CENTURY AFTER. 



who could do justice to them? Only Juvenal could do justice to the feasters. 
The Roman banqueting-rooms were dedicated to different gods, and a particular 
rate of expense was attached to each. Cicero and Pompey once determined to 
surprise Lucullus, by an unexpected visit; but he was not surprised, for he 
ordered one of his slaves to have the cloth laid in the Apollo, which was 
probably his most expensive room. Claudius had a magnificent one named 
Mercury. And Nero, — to which of the infernal deities was his banqueting-room 
consecrated? It was in his Golden House, the circular motion of whose walls 






and ceilinofs mocked 
the revolutions of the 
heavens, and flouted 
the changing of the 
seasons, as they show- 
ered down flowers 
and perfumes on the 
trembling guests. 

Our markets exist 
on a grander scale in 
the great Fairs which 
take place the world 
over, and which may 
be said to be the ori- 
gin of the markets of 
to-day. They occur 
at stated seasons, — 
the Leipsic Fair, for 
instance, in January, 
March, and Septem- 
ber, beginning, to 

and Bokhara, for tobacco, apricots, figs, prunes, raisins, almonds, pomegranates, 
Cashmere shawls, turbans, and manufactures of brass and ivory. The great 
Russian Fair is held in July and August, at Nijnii Novgorod, where one may 
find the silks of Persia, the furs of Siberia, the teas of China, and see within 
the catholic precincts of trade a Greek church and a Mohammedan mosque. 
The vessels which crowd the river there, unloading and loading day after day, 
and the caravans which halt there as at a caravansery — these have sheathed 
the sword and the cimeter, have silenced the noise of the tom-tom, the blare 




^i>H4-^' ''lU 



HOMINY MAN. 



speak by the card, 
on New Year's Day, 
Easter, and Michael- 
mas, and drawing to a 
common centre mer- 
chants from Germany, 
England, France, 
Russia, Italy, Greece, 
Turkey, Persia,— from 
everywhere, with 
every kind of mer- 
chandise. The Hin- 
doos have a great Fair 
in spring, at Hurdwar, 
where the northern 
and southern coun- 
tries exchange com- 
modities with each 
other, the horses, 
mules, camels of Ca- 
bul, Moultan, Balkh, 



MARKETRY. 155 

of the trumpet, the thunder of cannon, and have made a summer peace among 
the tribes, nations, reUgions. Trade hath trodden down turbulence, as a quaint 
old author has it, and cash converted to Christianity. Coming westward we 
find, or rather should have found half a century ago, Fairs in France, England, 
Scotland, and Ireland: a Fair at Longchamps in Paris, at Smithfield in London, 
at the Grass market in Edinburgh, not forgetting the Fair of shillalahs at 
Donnybrook. Fairs are temporary markets, markets perpetual Fairs. There it 
is in a nutshell. 

To return, or rather to come to, nos moictons — the markets of Philadelphia. 
They date back, the earliest of them, to about thirty years after its first 
settlement. Dryasdust, to whom we commend our antiquarian readers, has, 
without doubt, settled the exact time. We find them referred to incidentally in 
the Minutes of the City Council, which extend from 1704 to 1776. Among the 
ordinances ordered to be drawn in 1714, was one to oblige the sellers of grain 
and meal in the market to expose their meal under the Court-house by opening 
the mouths of their sacks, that the inhabitants might see what they bought. 
Four years later, a marketman, named Powel, prays that he may be allowed a 
discount on his stall-rent, he being considerably out of pocket in building of 
the bridge over Dock creek, at Walnut street. As the markets grew larger the 
inhabitants of the city considered that their safety was endangered by the 
careless driving of the marketmen on market days, and the Common Council 
ordered that proper iron chains should be provided, to stop the passage of 
carts and carriages through the market-places. They were to be put up on 
market-days at sunrise, and continue till ten o'clock in the forenoon, in summer, 
and eleven in winter. This was in 1741. Twenty odd years later, (January 30th, 
1764, if Dryasdust will have it,) steelyards were forbidden to be used in the 
market, to the disgust of five complaining butchers. Ten years later, the bushel 
measure, which was of copper, was ordered to be made of brass. Garrulous 
old Watson, who has collected these items for us, tells us further, that the first 
notice of a permanent market occurs in the Minutes before referred to in 1709, 
and that on its being put to vote how the money should be raised to build 
one, it was voted that the Aldermen should contribute and pay double what the 
Common Councilmen should; and a year afterwards it was agreed that it should be 
built with all expedition. These public-spirited, pecunious City Fathers furnished 
the money, which was repaid them out of the rents of the butchers. In 1729 
they agreed to erect twenty stalls for the accommodation of such as brought 
provisions from the Jerseys; and in the same year, a poet of the period described 



iS6 



A CENTl^RY AFTER. 




the market-house on High street, adjoining 
the Court-house, where the sight of stocks, 
posts, and pillory reminded evil-doers of the 
punishments that awaited them. 
As time went on, the market was extended up to Third street, where for many 
years the stocks, posts, and pillory remained. Three years before the Revolution 
it was proposed to construct another market, to extend in continuation from 
Third to Fourth street, and the measure was carried, to the disgust of the 
property-holders on High street, who employed persons in the night to pull 
down the mason-work of the day. Fairs, as might have been expected, were held 
in our markets in the olden time. They were opened by a cryer's proclamation, 
("Oyez!") in which all persons trading and negotiating in the fair were charged 
and commanded to keep the King's peace; and the selling of strong liquors 



MARKETRY. 



157 



and the carrying of unlawful weapons were prohibited. "And if any person be 
hurt by another, let him report to the Mayor here present. God save the 
King!" 

A good specimen of our early markets is the old market-house on Second 
street. It stands in the centre of the street, which widens here, — a dingy brick 
hall, fifty or sixty years old, with market-sheds on each side, and a clock at 
the Pine street end. The main entrance is in the hall, whose low ceiling shows 
that it is not a modern structure. A type of its class, its stalls were occupied 
permanently by a certain number of butchers and hucksters; but the business 
done in it, for the most part, was directly with the farmers, who brought their 
produce to market themselves. For then the reign of the middlemen, or, as 
they now style themselves, produce and commission merchants, had not begun. 
We now pay three or four profits; then we paid only one. We were more 
rural in our markets then than now; for there are old people among us, and 
not very old people, either, who can remember when the May-pole was erected 
before this old market-hall, and May-day celebrated as in the old time in 
England. They can remember, too, when the fish-stalls were kept by women 
who were as proficient in coarseness as their far-away sisters in Billingsgate. 
Why have these old fishwives attained a bad eminence the world over? Whence 
the evolution of foulness from fish? "What sono- the sirens sang, or what 
name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling 
questions, are not beyond all conjecture." Perhaps not, Sir Thomas. But the 
puzzling question propounded above is. No piscine Qidipus has ever solved 
it, and if any should he shall have his choice of the Fora (Apicius thinks of 
buying that six-pound mullet) or the Agoi-a, if that old chatterer, Socrates, will 
only move on! He shall; for coming along the street, yonder, mark the 
watchman. He will do what the agoranomi failed to do — he will arrest Socrates, 
and take him to the watch-house! He will arrest us likewise, if we are not 
careful. Agora and Fora — what markets be these? And what be mullets? 
The best fish in our markets, sir, are catfish and sheep's-head. One need not 
be old to remember those old-time watchmen. How they used to light the 
lamps early in the evening. How they used to sit in their boxes, on the 
street-corners, and smoke their clay pipes. How they used to go their rounds, 
all night long, in the snow, in the rain, in the moonlight and starlight, singing, 
as they went, the hour and the weather. "Eleven o'clock, and a windy night!" 
"Three o'clock, and a cloudy morning!" Nocturnal dials and barometers, tliey 
were vocal bulletins in war-time. They sang the death of our braves when we 



iS8 



A CENTURY AFTER. 



were fighting the Seminoles. "Death of Major Dade!" But they are gone, 
those ancient and most quiet watchmen, who would rather sleep than talk. 
They comprehend vagrom men no more, but suffer thieves to steal out of 
their company. They are gone, those dear old Charleys, to the paradise of 
Doo-berry and Verges. Not so their contemporaries, the hot-corn women, who 
are still to be seen about our markets as in the olden time. They are of 
all ages, the elderly predominating, in the shape of wrinkled, grandmotherly old 
creatures, with little black children in their laps. You may see them in the 
summer evenings, sitting under the lighted lamps, on the corners of the streets, 




LIGHT-WEIGHT BUTTER. 



or on the unoccupied stalls of the market-sheds, chanting the excellence of the 
cereals in their baskets, steaming away in their jackets of husk, and sending 
forth fragrant odors. An ear of hot corn, with a modicum of salt and butter, 
is a morsel worthy of Apicius; but it requires more courage, and more appetite, 
to stop and purchase one, and munch it, in public, down to the cob, than it did 
thirty years ago. It is not eaten, therefore, so gregariously, nor so cornucopiously. 
From the dusky purlieus which shelter the hot-corn woman, when she is at home, 
and which extend from Pine and Lombard to Shippen and Fitzwater streets, and 
from Fifth to Eighth streets, comes forth confidently another itinerant dealer in 



MARKETRY. 



159 



cereals — the hominy man. He may be seen almost any day, with his bags and 
his basket, trudging along cheerily in a blue-check apron, with a squirrel's-tail 
couchant at the side of his hat. What is it that he sings? Hark: "Hominy 
man come out this morning, with his sweet homini-i-i!" But we must not forget 
the dilapidated colored ladies, who sit on our empty market-stalls, and sell, or 
try to sell, savory messes of tripe, dumplings, and other mysterious compounds, 
to the tune of "Peppery-pot, all hot!" Nor that learned body of industrious 
darkeys, the professors of carpet-shaking and white-washing! We have a 
Professor Roland, who condescends to beat the dust from our floor coverings; 
and a Professor Oliver, who is not above cleaning our walls. Roland and 
Oliver — knightly names. Arcades Sambo! 

To return to marketry, however. There are seven or eight old market-houses 
still in existence among us. Some of them are of semi-antiquity, going back to 
the beginning of the present century, when they were, no doubt, considered 
very splendid structures. Their dimensions were ample enough then, mean as 
they may appear now, and we should no more look down upon them than we 
should look down upon our ancestors. In a certain sense, they are our ancestors, 
perpetuated, petrified, fossilized in brick and stone. At any rate, they are our 
poor relations, whom we are bound to remember kindly, for, between ourselves, 
they were as prosperous in their day as their descendants are in ours. The 
patriarch of all — the old market-shed that formerly stood in Market street — has 
vanished: the Roman Fora, the Greek Agora, are not more defunct. Where 
are the butchers who used to have their stalls in it? the hucksters who used 
to have theirs outside of it? the farmers who used to strinor their wa^rons alono- 
the neighborhood? Do they follow their old occupations across the Styx? Do 
they have markets in Elysium? They certainly have nothing so substantial as 
the Farmers' Market, at Twelfth and Market streets. There is no occasion to 
ask when it was built, unless one is desirous of rivaling Dryasdust, for everything 
about it declares its modern origin. Its wide avenues, its spacious stalls, its lofty 
ceiling and perfect ventilation could not have existed a century ago. They would 
have been as much before their time then as the dingy inconveniences of the 
old markets are behind their time now. The Farmers' Market, on market-days, 
is a sight to behold. The long line of stalls stretching away and diminishing, 
hung with all manner of farm-yard and forest marketry; the crowds coming and 
going in the main avenue; the receding rows of lights overhead; the color, the 
movement, the life, — who can describe it? Dazzling and bewildering as a whole, 
it is enjoyable only when studied in its details. At one stall on the left, the 



i6o 



A CENTURY AFTER. 



owner of which proclaims himself from Delaware county, you observe a deer 
that a few days since was running wild in the woods; the stall opposite, which 
declares its allegiance to Chester county, is devoted to domestic poultry. Other 
counties and other marketry succeed as you go on. You can find everything 
here in its season, and better than you can find it anywhere else. We live in 
the border-land of the North and the South, and have whatever is best in both. 
Ask a New Yorker whence he obtains his best butter and his best fowls. As 




"ox THE HALF-SHELL." 



surely from us as we obtain our best apples and worst butter from him. For 
we do have poor butter — firkin butter — for the consumption of the poorest of us. 
Philadelphia has the cheapest markets in the United States, but they contain 
some things which are not cheap, even to the rich. Metaphorically speaking, 
we have our mullets and our surmullets. One reason why our markets are 
cheap is, that our farmers understand their business well enough to prefer to 
transact it themselves and not through middlemen. They prefer to bring their 



MARKETRY. i6i 

produce directly to us, and we prefer to purchase it directly of them. They 
come twenty, thirty, — who knows how many miles, traveling all night, all day, 
if necessary. They are butchers, too, many of them, as well as farmers, and 
we save on the lambs, on the sheep, on the calves which they fetch us, as well 
as on the vegetables, the chickens, the eggs, and the butter. 

The great natural philosopher who wondered how it was that most of the 
large cities of the world were situated on the banks of rivers, or by the sea-side, 
might well wonder at the situation of Philadelphia, and its extraordinary facilities 
for feeding its inhabitants. Its dairy is the great dairy counties of Montgomery, 
Bucks, Lancaster, Chester, and Delaware, which also supply it with poultry. Its 
garden lies partly across the Delaware, in Burlington, Camden, Gloucester, and 
Salem counties, and partly in the great truck-farms in its outlying districts. Its 
orchard is Delaware, Maryland, and New Jersey. It would be difficult, indeed, 
to name a place in the neighborhood upon which it does not levy contributions. 
It is the centre, so to speak, of miles of natural marketry. The sight of a 
great market, especially a meat market, is anything but a poetical one to 
sentimental minds. Young Miss Pitiful, who asked the butcher if he was coiner 
to kill the dear, tender, innocent lamb, (Mary's little lamb, perhaps,) couldn't 
endure the thought of it. Neither could young Overnice, tiniest of bardlings, who 
flattered himself that he resembled Byron, because he couldn't bear to see a 
woman eat! It was so coarse, you know! This is the niminy-piminy way of 
looking at it. The poetical way, which is the manly one, is very different. 
Think what is being done for us while we stand here in the market-house. 
Think of the farmers at work for us. How they plow and harrow, how they 
sow and hoe, how they pluck up and cut down, and bear hither their potatoes, 
their corn, their melons, — all the produce of their farms, acres upon acres, daily. 
They drive their plowshares and ply their sickles for us. They have us in mind 
when the bloom is coming upon their peaches and the mist upon their plums; 
the children, when they are picking berries and gathering nuts; the farmer's 
boy, when he drives the cows to pasture; the farmer's girl, when she milks; 
the fisherman, when he drops his line and stretches his net in the Delaware 
and the Chesapeake; the gunner, when he blazes away at the reed-birds, the 
rail, and the canvas-back ducks. There is no poetry in the thought of this! 

If we had the art of making arithmetic attractive, we might do a little in 
the way of market statistics; but, unfortunately, the art does not e.\ist. We 
might say that so many thousands of beeves, calves, sheep, and swine were 
consumed here annually; so many thousands of bushels of potatoes, corn, wheat, 




^Alii;il'iililliyii!i|iiiiiiliiiliiiiiilllilii^ i||lili!iiiiliii|iil' 



MARKETRY. 163 

buckwheat; so many thousands of baskets of peaches, plums, pears; so many 
thousands of chickens and turkeys; so many thousands of partridges, woodcock, 
snipe, reed-birds, rail, and canvas-back ducks; so many thousands of bushels 
of oysters, and so on; but the figures would convey no idea to our minds. The 
sum would be too large for our mental slate. Enough that our marketry is 
abundant, profuse, inexhaustible. It not only supplies ourselves, but the people 
of other cities. They are eager to get our chickens and our butter. The 
experts of Europe have pronounced our butter the best in the world. Speaking 
of butter, reminds us that an amusing scene may occasionally be witnessed in 
our market-houses: it is when the clerk of the market comes alono- with the 
regulation scales and weights, and the pound of butter, like Belshazzar, is found 
wanting. He turns triumphantly to the seller, who scratches his chin with a 
puzzled air. He didn't suspect it nor intend it. He sold the butter in good 
faith, and the farmer made it in good faith; but as it was very closely made 
and wastage was not calculated upon, it falls more or less short. 

The marketry of Philadelphia is so abundant as to almost defy description. 
To begin with poultry, — for we must begin with something, — no markets in the 
country can compare with ours with regard to the variety of birds sold therein. 
We pass over our common fowls, hens, chickens, turkeys, and come to the 
game-birds, such as the English snipe, the woodcock, rail, partridges, pheasants, 
black duck, mallard, teal, red-head, not forgetting those plump little morsels of 
sweetness, the reed-birds. Snipe are among our spring birds. Our sportsmen 
shoot them, in April, in great numbers as they feed on the leaves of aquatic 
plants. Rail reach us in summer, coming by night to the borders of the 
Schuylkill and the Delaware, where we find them running among the tall reeds 
of the wild oats and hiding at our approach. A tender, juicy, delicate bird 
is the rail. The partridge is a hardy fowl that seldom migrates, and as it 
frequently betakes itself to the barn-yard, when snow comes, and mixes with 
the domestic poultry, it is easily caught in nets and traps. Partridges were 
taken in such quantities years ago that our markets were overstocked with live 
ones. The gourmand prefers those which have fed in buckwheat fields, and 
eschews those which have fed on the buds and fruit of the mountain laurel. 
He declares that the best come from the Tappahannock meadows. Canvas-backs 
appear in October and November, coming in great flocks from the North, 
making directly for the Chesapeake, the Susquehanna, the Potomac, and their 
tributar)' streams. A favorite way of shooting them is from the surface-boat. 
Concealed in this novel craft, a practiced ducker will kill hundreds of birds in 



i64 A CENTURY AFTER. 

a day. As they are our dearest as well as best wild-fowl, it pays to be a good 
ducker; for New York demands them as well as Philadelphia; so does Baltimore, 
Washington, Charleston, — the Continent, in short, clamors for canvas-backs. The 
red-head is not an indifferent bird, feeding as it does on the leaves of the 
water-celery; nor the mallard, which is abundant in Delaware; nor the teal, which 
is found in multitudes along the shores of the Delaware and the Chesapeake. 
It comes in September and is driven away by the frost. It is best, the epicures 
say, when it is split and broiled. When the white race first came to the New 
World they found that noblest of our game-fowl, the wild turkey, everywhere. 
Now it is seldom found north and east of Pennsylvania, and only in the 
remoter portions of Pennsylvania. It is incomparably superior to its domesticated 
descendants. We have not done with our birds yet; for, while the summer is 
passing and we are enjoying its fruits and berries, there is a little bird growing 
up for us in the Northern States. It builds its nest in the grass and in the 
fields of wheat, and rears its young, and pipes its merry note. They call it the 
bobolink there. By and by it wings its way southward. In the still August 
evenings, we can distinguish its "clink-clink," as it flies over the city; and the 
next day, perhaps, we find it plundering the corn-fields and swarming along the 
Schuylkill and the Delaware, feeding itself fat with the luxuriant wild oats. Now 
it is the reed-bird. Before the frost comes, it leaves us for the South, where it 
is the rice-bunting. When it leaves the South it goes to Jamaica, where it is 
the butter-bird. It is delicious everywhere. 

We despair of doing justice to the profusion of the marketry which comes 
to us and goes from us in all directions. We carry on a large traffic with 
other cities, and in this our middlemen and commission merchants occupy a 
legitimate and important position. A considerable space along the Delaware 
front of the city is devoted to wholesale marketry, beginning, say, at Vine street, 
where a market-house has been recently erected, and extending down to the 
Dock street market-houses, embracing, also, portions of Water and Front streets, 
as well as some of the streets running up from the river. Here we ship 
produce to all parts of the country, relieving thus the extra trains of the 
different railroads. Adjoining the Dock street wharf are the Spruce street 
oyster-wharves. Schooners, sloops, canal-boats lie here laden with these delicious 
bivalves, and do a thriving business. They are brought by boat and by rail 
from Egg Harbor, Delaware, and Chesapeake Bays, — Absecon Salts, Maurice River 
Coves, Chincoteagues, — who knows how many varieties? A specialty of the 
neighborhood is the oyster-wagon, at which the gourmand halts and eats his fill 



MARKETRY. 



i6s 



from the half-shell, not furtively, as you might suppose from his fastidious habits, 
but openly, boldly, and with infinite gusto. Fish are abundant here. The 
Delaware is celebrated for its shad, of which large fisheries are established near 
Gloucester, on the New Jersey shore, opposite and below the city. We have all 
kinds of fresh-water fish, from the streams and mountain streams of Pennsylvania, 
not forgetting the speckled trout with which the latter are populous, and the 
white catfish, which seduces many a Philadelphian out of bed for an early drive in 
the Park, where he begins the day with catfish and coffee for breakfast, and ends 
it with broiled chickens and waffles for supper. We get our salt-water fish from 
the Atlantic coast and its bays. A rare specimen of these is the sheep's-head, 
which is caught along the inlets and thoroughfares at Atlantic City. More 
foreign fish, as mackerel, salmon, and the like, come to us by rail; fresh-canned 
salmon, for instance, coming from as far as California and Oregon. What 
our farmers fail to bring us we obtain by rail from Pennsylvania, and by rail 
from New Jersey, also by steamboats, sloops, canal-boats, a navy of small craft 
perpetually dropping down the creeks that empty into the Delaware. Delaware 
and Maryland are our great peach countries. Our speculators flock thither and 
buy up entire farms before the fruit is full grown; and our railroad men rack 
their brains as to the most expeditious way of getting it to us when it is 
ripe. The Southern Pennsylvania and Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore 
Railroads fairly swarm with trains. Is there any doubt, think you, about our 
ability to subsist the visitors to the Centennial? Let them come and try, millions 
of them! 




THE DELAWARE. 



FOURTEEN or fifteen years ago, when the North and the South were 
preparuig to hug each other in a deadly embrace, it was the determination 
of each, as we all remember well, to inflict every possible injury on the other, — 
not merely on battle-fields, which as yet were not, but on the great commercial 
interests which are the life and prosperity of all modern peoples. The strength 
of the South was its agriculture: the strength of the North was its commerce. 
The North declared that the ports of the South should be closed to the world: 
the South declared that the ships of the North should be swept from the sea. 
This, in brief, was the meaning of the legislation of both, and before the smoke 
of the guns that were fired upon Fort Sumter had fairly cleared away, the 
South had embodied her share of it in privateers. The first blow struck was at 
the whale fisheries of New England, stragglers from whose widely-scattered 
navy were captured and carried into New Orleans. The "Dixie" ran out from 
Charleston and captured our coffee; and the "Jeff". Davis" ran out as far as 
Nantucket Shoals, and in a short time took prizes to the value of a quarter of 
a million of dollars. By the end of May, 1861, upwards of twenty Northern 
vessels were captured and taken into New Orleans; and by October at least 
one hundred were destroyed, with their cargoes, amounting to millions of dollars. 
While this was occurrinof in our own waters, the "Sumter" and the "Nashville" 
were preying upon our commerce on distant seas, with none to molest or make 
them afraid. The North was, indeed, vulnerable through her vessels. They must 
be saved somehow; but how? There was but one way, and that was by placing 
them under the protection of foreign flags. It was humiliating to abandon the 
Flag of our Fathers, so humiliating that it would not have seemed possible 
once; but if necessity knows no law, preservation knows no patriotism. What else 
was to be done while the "Sumter" and the "Alabama," the "Florida" and the 
"Georgia" were scouring the seas and destroying the ships of the North? Why, 
before the end of January, 1S64, we had lost upwards of two hundred vessels 
of all sorts, amounting, with their cargoes, to the nice little sum of fourteen 
millions of dollars. The end came at last, one Sunday morning in June, off the 
coast of Cherbourg, when the "Alabama" struck her colors to the "Kearsarge," 



i68 A CENTURY AFTER. 

and went down, leaving her astonished crew struggling in the waters, some to 
be picked up by our boats, and others by the "Greyhound," which at once took 
to her heels for England. The end had come: we had no merchant marine. 

Our supremacy of the deep was gone. The blow that smote it into nothingness 
was struck on the banks of the Clyde, where the Confederate cruisers were built, 
by a people with whom we were at peace, under the protection of laws which 
were neutral in nothing but good faith. Our supremacy was gone, but not 
forever; for while the maritime cities and towns of New England were passive 
and supine, regretting the destruction of their ships, but making no efforts to 
replace them, Philadelphia, with a decision and an energy which characterizes 
her when she is aroused, set to work to help to restore, at least as far as 
she was concerned, the commerce of the North. The Pennsylvania Railroad 
Company came forward and made itself responsible for the bonds of the 
American Steamship Company to the extent of a million and a half of 
dollars, while the remainder of the money that was necessary to start the 
enterprise, amounting to over two millions of dollars more, was subscribed 
by the public-spirited citizens of Philadelphia. The skill of her mechanics was 
immediately brought into requisition, and four iron steamers were ordered. 
The "Pennsylvania," which was the first finished, was launched at twelve 
minutes past ten, on the morning of August 15th, 1872, and was witnessed 
by at least fifty thousand people. To sa)- that it was a magnificent sight is 
to sa)' nothing. When she was fitted up, and ready to sail, which was not 
until May 5th, 1873, her trial-trip was, if possible, a still more magnificent 
sight. The great ship, crowded with guests waving their hats wildly as she 
steamed out into the river, with her colors flying — the dear old stars and 
stripes — at the stern ; the river alive with steamers, tugs, and yachts, the 
crowds on which waved their hats as wildly as she plowed her way among 
them; the flags on these and on the masts of all the vessels in the harbor; 
the shouts, the huzzas, the exultations — it was simply indescribable. She sailed 
down the Delaware to the breakwater, where she landed the greater portion 
of her guests and made a further trial out to sea, and proved herself a 
staunch, good ship. The same month she sailed for Liverpool, the only 
steamer sailing from an American port flying the American flag. Meanwhile, 
other ships were being built, and three more, the "Ohio," the "Indiana," and 
tlie "Illinois," are now running on the same line. That they are happily- 
named is apparent, when we consider the freights they carry, which consist 
largely of the products of the South and West, notably of the West, and 



THE DELAWARE. 




CITY ICE-BOAT. 



which is brought directly to their wharves by the Pennsylvania Railroad and 
shipped without further handling. The same facilities are, of course, extended 
to freights and passengers arriving from Europe, both being dispatched, without 
loss of time, in any desired direction. A branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad 
runs along the river front from Dock street to the steamship wharves, where 
roads connect with the main line, which extends its branches to different points 
on the Delaware, below the city, where heavy freights, such as grain, coal, and 
petroleum, are shipped. Emigrants leaving the vessels in which they arrive pass 
under shelter to the baggage and refreshment rooms, where they can obtain 
postal facilities, and have their money changed, and be at home, in short, until 
they step into the cars of the Pennsylvania Railroad, which come to the doors 
to take them wherever they wish to go. 

There are Philadelphians now living — and they are not centenarians, 
either — who remember when the Delaware was frozen over solidly early in 
winter, and remained so until the warmth of the spring sun and the inflowing 
of floods from the melting of snows on the mountains and in the valleys broke 
it up into great fields of ice, which passed and repassed the wharves as the 



I70 A CENTURY AFTER. 

tide impelled them hither and thither on their lazy way to the sea. It was a 
stirring sight to see these cold, white rafts jostle and crowd and override each 
other as they went swirling away in the water; a brilliant sight to see them 
kindle and burn as the sun touched them with its torch of fire; but not a 
pleasant sight to the younger members of the community, who dwelt fondly 
on the remembrance of their sports up and down and along and across the 
glittering floor that extended from shore to shore and from State to State. 
There were skaters on the earth in those days, and the Delaware was their 
favorite skating-ground, as the Schuylkill is the favorite skating-ground of their 
descendants. The names of some of these dead-and-gone old boys are preserved 
by Omnium Gatherum Watson, together with an account of their dexterity in 
cutting figures, "High Dutch," and other different feats known among the guild 
of skaters. Besides the Delaware and the Schuylkill, there were skating-ponds 
in town, on which the forefathers of that generation disported themselves, and 
which were doubtless frequented by the juveniles of a later period. There was 
Everly's Pond, we are told, on the south side of Arch street, above Seventh; 
there was Evans' Pond, on the north side of Race street; there was Hudson's 
Pond, on the north-west corner of High street and Fifth; and there was the 
great Blue-house Pond, surrounded by willows, on the solith-east corner of South 
street and Ninth or Tenth. 

They were jolly times, those old days, though the city was comparatively 
ice-bound and its commerce was entirely stopped, for railroads were in their 
infancy. Our wants were few and easily satisfied. The crowds on the river 
enjoyed their skating and sleighing, and patronized the refreshment booths and 
"ox-roasts." Our business with New Jersey and the business of New Jersey 
with us was carried on by means of sledges, which crossed the river hitherward 
loaded with provisions, fuel, and the like, and recrossed thitherward loaded 
with goods from our stores. The merchant of forty years ago, who looked on 
complacently while his ships lay frozen in the docks, if alive and in business 
to-day, which is not at all unlikely, congratulates himself on the improvements 
which have been wrought by steam and iron. The world has moved and with 
it the ice-fields of the Delaware, whose furrows are no longer plowed by the 
sun, but by the iron shares of our ice-boats. The winter of 1874-75 '^^-^ the 
coldest on record for a hundred years, and ice, as we all remember, was 
abundant everywhere. Many northern cities were completely ice-bound. Not 
so the port of Philadelphia, which was kept open by its powerful ice-boats. 
The management of these winter plows, if we may call them such, was created 



THE DEL A WARE. 



171 




into a department 
in 1837, to assist 
and maintain the 
commerce of Phil- 
adelphia. This de- 
partment consists 
of six trustees, one 
elected by the Se- 
lect and one by the 
Common Council, 
at the last stated 
meeting in May, for 
the term of three 
years. Two \acan- 
cies occur annually, 
which are annually 
filled; the trustees 
being selected from 
the most prominent 
merchants of the 
city, and not as they 
would, probably, be 
elsewhere, from 
prominent pot- 
house politicians. 
A wooden boat was 
constructed and 
placed in commis- 
sion in the winter of 
1837-38- It served 
its purpose until 
1865, when it was 
found necessary to 
replace it by an iron 
boat. Three years 
later, a second iron 
boat was built and 



i;2 A CENTURY AFTER. 

placed in commission in February of the following year. The increasing commerce 
of the city made another boat necessary, and it was accordingly built and placed 
in commission in 1874. No northern city in the world, it is safe to say, is better 
able — few so well able — to keep its navigation open as Philadelphia. Ice-boat 
No. I is used for harbor service; ice-boats Nos. 2 and 3 are used for assisting 
and towing vessels, during the winter, to and from the breakwater, forming a 
semi-weekly line to and from the Capes. These boats, which are owned by the 
city, are valued at half a million of dollars. The appropriations made by the city 
to this department for the centennial year are sixty-eight thousand five hundred 
dollars, and the estimated receipts are ten thousand dollars, the municipal costs 
being fifty-eight thousand five hundred dollars, besides the capital invested. As 
far as the commerce of Philadelphia is concerned, we may say of this department, 
what Colonel Sellers said of his schemes, "There's millions in it!" 

Let us imagine ourselves on one of those ice-boats, or as that may be too 
wintry a suggestion, on one of the flying steamers, and go sailing down the 
Delaware to the breakwater. We shall pass Chester, the busiest place for its 
size that we can anywhere find. It has grown rapidly within the last ten years, 
a large amount of capital from Philadelphia and other cities gravitating thither. 
Its nearness to Philadelphia, the ease with which it can be reached, and its 
comparative freedom from the burdensome taxation which is the curse of all 
great cities, are the inducements which have populated it with manufacturers. 
Shipbuilding has come to be a great business here as well as at Philadelphia, 
so much so that the Delaware is familiarly known as the American Clyde. 
Chester is connected with Philadelphia by the Philadelphia, Wilmington and 
Baltimore Railroad, by a branch of the Reading Railroad, and by flying steamers, 
such as we are supposed to be on. It is a favorite spot with sportsmen in 
search of reed-birds, rail, wild ducks, and whatever other feathered game 
frequents the reedy shores of the neighborhood. Below Chester, a little inland, 
is Wilmington, and below Wilmington, on the river, are New Casde and 
Delaware City. 

New Castle and Chester figure together in the early history of Pennsylvania, 
in connection with the Founder. New Castle is said to have been setded as 
early as 1631 by the Swedes, Avho were overpowered by the Dutch, who built a 
tort there twenty years afterwards. It was fruitful in names. First it was 
called Stockholm, then Sandthock, then New Amstel and Fort Kasimir, then 
Delawaretown, and at last New Castle. We find the English there in 1675, and 
two years later we have the account of the arrival there of the ship "Kent," 



THE DEL A WARE. 



173 



with two hundred and thirty jaassengers, mostly Friends of good estates. They 
landed at Racoons' creek, where they found some Swedish houses; but not liking 
their accommodations, they went up to what is now Burlington, and purchasing 
a town lot called it New Beverly. Penn landed at New Castle on the 22d of 
October, 1682, and was received with acclamations by the Swedes and the Dutch. 
He called the people to the court-house and addressed them. He was in his 
prime, comely and manly, a courteous, honest gentleman of thirty-eight, and he 
won their regard and love. They besought him to unite their territory to his 
own, and become their governor. He consented, though not at that time, and 
they were united to Chester, from which, however, they were finally separated. 
From New Castle he proceeded to Chester, where some Friends had settled 
seven years before, probably from a colony in the Jerseys. It was then called 
Upland, and peopled with Swedes as well as Friends, though not apparently in 
as great numbers; for we read of as many as twenty-three vessels of the latter 
arriving there during the year that Penn landed. While in Chester he and his 
friends stopped at Essex House, the residence of Robert Wade, a hospitable 
gentleman of the olden time. It was situated at a short distance from Chester 
creek, near the margin of the Delaware, which its south-east gable faced, and 
close by was a grove of great pines and walnut trees, survivors of which were 
remaining a few years ago. The first Assembly was held at this time at Upland, 
and such was the unanimity of its members that they passed in three days all 
the laws that had been constructed in England, known as the Great Law of 
Pennsylvania. It was thought that Penn originally intended to found his city at 
Chester. It was also thought that Chester might grow into a shipping port. 
The good people of Chester were of importance in their own eyes. There is 
extant a petition, signed in 1 700 by ninety of their number, all writing good 
hands, we are quaintly told, who pray, after the customary "Whereas," that as 
Chester is daily improving, and may one day be a good place, (some of the 
laws passed by the first Assembly militate against that supposition, however,) 
that the Queen's roadway be laid out as direct as possible from Darby to the 
bridge on Chester creek. As the road below Chester was called the King's 
road, it was natural that the road above should be called after his Majesty's 
royal consort. Penn did not found his city at Chester, which he soon left for 
the site of our goodly city. Neither did Chester become a shipping port. Not 
then, that is. What it is now, we see as we pass it. 

What shall we say of the breakwater, which we have reached in our 
imaginary trip down the Delaware? We might say much. The harbor formed 



A CENTURY AFTER. 




COLLIERS LOADING AT PORT RICHMOND. 



by it is, perhaps, the best on the whole Atlantic coast, lying as it does in the 
direct line of commerce between the Northern and Southern States and South 
America. The breakwater consists of two massive walls, the larger of which 
measures twenty-five hundred feet in length, and the smaller fourteen hundred 
feet. They are built of the heaviest stone, and rest upon rock foundations. 
Vessels of any size can lie in deep water close to these defenses in perfect 
safety; no harbor in the world is more safe. The harbor proper is immediately 
inside of Cape Henlopen, on the south side of the entrance to Delaware bay, 
into which, through the broad, deep channel, vessels come and go by day and 
night and in all weathers. The approaches and neighboring waters are well 
supplied with lights. Opposite, on Cape May, there is a white, light of the first 
order, flashing at half-minute intervals, and here, at Cape Henlopen, is a fixed 
white light. The Cape May light is visible at a distance of eighteen nautical 
miles, the Henlopen light at a distance of seventeen, and a third light — a white 
beacon, showinof a fixed liofht — at a distance of twelve nautical miles. There is 
a fixed beacon on the breakwater, and there are life-saving stations near, and a 
Government steamer cruising about for the assistance of disabled vessels. This, 
in brief, is the breakwater, concerning which, if you wish to know more, you 
must ask somebody else, for now we must ask the man at the wheel to 
head about and take us up the river. As we descended along the shore of 
Delaware we will ascend along the low-lying shores of New Jersey. We pass 
and are passed by steamers going to or coming from New York or Baltimore, 
and river-craft, loaded with merchandise, coming and going hither and thither. 
We have left Cape May and its summer gaieties far behind us, and are sailing 



THE DEL A WARE. 175 

past little Jersey settlements, the names of which we do not care to inquire. We 
have passed Salem and shall soon see Gloucester, which Is of some importance 
as a manufacturing town, as what place near Philadelphia is not? Historic 
ground is before us. Three miles below Gloucester, for example, the battle of 
Red Bank was fought. Here is how it happened: — There was a fort at Red 
Bank which was occupied by Continental troops, a fact which was displeasing 
to his Excellency, General Howe. Reports of the surrender of Burgoyne had 
reached him and he was not, as may be supposed, in a good humor. Count 
Donop, a Hessian officer of distinction, wished to distinguish himself still further, 
and Howe gave him leave to carry Red Bank by assault, provided it could be 
done. His Countship and Colonelship attempted this feat on the 2 2d of October, 
1776, (the anniversary, by the way, of Penn's landing at New Castle, ninety-four 
years before,) with some regiments of Hessian grenadiers and infantry, some 
companies of yagers, some mounted yagers, and the artillery ot five battalions. 
We might give you the figures, but what would it signify at this late day? We 
are not talking history, but the substance of history, in regard to this litrie 
skirmish. They arrived in the neighborhood of the fort, which they found could 
be approached on three sides, through thick woods, to within four hundred 
yards. It was a pentagon, with a high, earthy rampart, protected b)' an abatis. 
Donop brought up his batteries on the right wing and directed them at the 
embrasures. At the head of each of his battalions was a captain with carpenters 
and a hundred men bearing fascines. They were haughtily ordered to surrender, 
those skulking Continentals in the fort, but they refused. Then the Hessians — 
it was nearly five o'clock in the afternoon — ran forward, under the protection of 
a fire from their batteries, and carried the abatis. The fort is before them; they 
will get it. Perhaps; but in the meantime they are getting it themselves. They 
are surrounded by pitfalls; they are exposed to a terrible fire of small arms 
and grape-shot, and two galley's, which are concealed by the bushes, rake them 
with chain-shot. They form on the glacis, for they are brave men; they fill the 
ditch and press on towards the ramparts. Donop and his staff are either killed 
or wounded. Those who are climbing up the ramparts are beaten down with 
bayonets. Twilight has come and they are falling back. The wounded crawl 
into the woods. Donop lies upon the field mortally wounded. The British 
men-of-war that attempted to take a part have fallen down the river and are 
grounded. The next day they are set on fire by red-hot shot from our galleys 
and floating-batteries, and blown up before they can escape. We contrive to 
save a couple of twenty-four pounders from the wrecks, just for a trophy, you 



176 A CENTURY AFTER. 

know. Poor, brave, rash Donop lives three days and dies, with the bitter 
remark that he was the victim of his own ambition and the avarice of his 
sovereien. So much for the battle of Red Bank. 

The panorama which stretches before us, as we approach the city from 
below, is very striking. We cannot describe it in detail, there is such a 
shifting of its masses, some of which stand out more distinctly than others. 
On either hand lies a State, whose towns and villages advance and recede. 
Fort Mifflin, which was a mere earthwork in 1776, when the English attacked 
it and their men-of-war were blown up, (five or six years ago we raised 
the hull of one of them, the "Augusta," a sixty-four gun frigate, the flagship 
of their fleet, — it lies on the bank at Gloucester,) is now, as we see, a 
powerful fort, with a range of frowning ramparts defended by parrot guns and 
columbiads. A multitude of steamers, tugs, vessels, yachts, boats, and all manner 
of craft, then the great city, separating its buildings, as we draw nearer, until 
we recognize familiar quarters along the river front and familiar steeples and 
spires rising within, — not forgetting Girard Point and Greenwich Point. We 
must not allow the city to swallow up these, for they are important in many 
ways. Girard Point, which lies away to the left, at the junction of the Delaware 
and the Schuylkill, is a great grain depot, and has the largest elevator in the 
United States. It stands in the centre of the wharf of the International 
Navigation Company, is one hundred and thirty feet high, two hundred feet 
deep, and one hundred feet wide, and contains twelve elevating machines, each 
of which, we are told, has a capacity of unloading and delivering into the hold of 
vessels four thousand five hundred bushels of grain an hour, a total of fifty-four 
thousand bushels an hour when they are all working, or a grand total of five 
hundred and forty thousand bushels in a day of ten hours' work. This wharf 
and elevator are connected with the southern extension of the Pennsylvania 
Railroad, and cars loaded out West, in Minnesota, Kansas, where you will, are 
run directly up to the vessels which are to receive the grain, of which as many 
as twelve ordinary vessels or four first-class steamships can be berthed at once. 
These figures affect us more powerfully, or ought to, than any figures of speech 
in which we might indulge. Surely, the granary of the world is here. Greenwich 
Point lies a short distance above the sweeping bend the Delaware makes from 
the lower extremity of League Island. It is the terminal point and depot of the 
Pennsylvania Railroad, and has an immense outlet of wharves for the shipment 
of petroleum and coal. We shall have something to say of coal-wharves when 
we get to Port Richmond, which is not yet in sight. We are now passing 



178 A CENTURY AFTER. 

warehouses in which petroleum is refined, and other warehouses in which it is 
stored, a great himber station, a sugar-refinery, another grain-elevator, European 
steamship docks, more sugar-refineries, more steamboat wharves, southern, eastern, 
northern, — a wilderness of masts and buildings. Here, on the right, is Windmill 
Island, beyond it Camden, and above it Smith's Island, to which you used to go 
when you were a boy, when you went into the swimming-baths, into the ten-pin 
alley, into the summer-garden with its variegated lights. (Was that there, Senex, 
when you were a juvenile?) We are doing better here than if we stood 
on the Bridge of Sighs: for there we should only have a palace on one 
hand and a prison on the other, while here we have a city on each hand. 
Shall we wed the Delaware as the Doge of Venice wedded the Sea? Where 
is the Bucentaur? Away! the day of trumpery is past: the Age of Commerce 
is come! 

Past Camden and Cooper's Point, past the rolling-mills and forges of 
Philadelphia, the salt-wharves and the freight-wharves, and the shipping thereat, 
till we come to Port Richmond, directly opposite Treaty Island. This, you 
know, is the coal-shipping depot of the Reading Railroad Company. There 
are twenty-one docks here, which are fifteen thousand feet in length, and which 
can accommodate two hundred and fifty vessels; there are, besides, twenty-three 
piers, which are four and a quarter miles in length; there are upon these 
ten and a half miles of single railroad track and twenty-two miles of track 
connecting them with each other and the main lines. Cars are run upon these 
piers, and the coal with which they are laden at the mines is dropped through 
traps into long chutes into the holds of the vessels of transportation. One 
hundred and seventy-five thousand tons of coal can be stored here, of which 
thirty thousand can be shipped daily. Upwards of five hundred vessels are 
employed by the Reading Railroad Company, and among them are six iron 
steam-colliers, forerunners of a coming fleet of fifty. The amount of coal handled 
here annually is stated, in round numbers, at two and a quarter millions of tons. 
Whence does it come, and whither does it go? It comes from the whole anthracite 
region of the Schuylkill, say from Pottsville, the terminus of the Reading Road. 
It is ninety odd miles from Philadelphia, upon the edge of the great coal basin 
in the gap by which the Schuylkill breaks through Sharp Mountain, the sterile 
land thereabout yielding annually between three and four millions of tons, which 
are brought to us at Port Richmond by the Reading Road, and down our inner 
river by the Schuylkill Navigation Company. It goes where it is wanted, mostly 
to eastern and southern ports. 



THE DELA]VARE. 




DELAWARE WATER GAP. 



We have thus far considered the Delaware from a commercial point of 
view; let us now, while we continue our journey up\\'ard, regard its topography, 
its hydrography, and its picturesqueness. We are nearing Bridesburg, where 
the United States Arsenal is, and by and by we shall pass Andalusia, the once 
country seat of Nicholas Biddle, financier and poet, in the days of Andrew 
Jackson. Country seats are scattered on both sides of the river: Beverly, 
Riverton, beautiful places where many Philadclphians spend their summer months. 
A few miles above the city we come to Pennypack creek, which has only one 



i8o A CENTURY AFTER. 

drawback to its romantic beauty, and that is the House of Correction, which is 
situated upon its banks. To be seen at its best, Pennypack creek should be 
seen on a late afternoon, when all around is placid, and no air ripples the 
surface of the water which reflects the surrounding foliage, a broad frame of 
greenery that repeats itself in the mirror it encircles. We must not allow 
ourselves to be detained here, however, but must pursue our journey up the 
river to our destination. Past the Jersey city of Burlington and the good old 
town of Bristol; past Bordentown, where the home of Joseph Bonaparte was, 
and Morrisville, where the home of General Moreau was, and on to Trenton. 
Two historic incidents have made Trenton and the Delaware memorable. They 
occurred in the same year and the same month, only eighteen days apart; 
the first, on December 8th, 1776, when Washington and his army crossed the 
Delaware at Trenton in full retreat before the British, General Howe coming 
up in time to see them escape; and the last, on the night of the 25th, when 
Washington and a portion of his army recrossed the Delaware in the darkness, 
at McConkey's ferry, and fell upon the Hessians at Trenton, in the morning, 
before they had slept off their Christmas debauch, and thrashed them soundly, 
taking a thousand prisoners, as many stand of arms, six brass field-pieces, with 
the loss of only four men. From Trenton, the Pennsylvania Railroad, through 
its Delaware and Belvidere branch, runs up the valley as far as Manunka 
Chunk, where we obtain our first view of the Delaware Water Gap. We are 
not going by rail, though, but by the Delaware, which is bearing us on its 
winding, curving, sweeping way, past town after town, Lambertville, Phillipsburg, 
the beautiful city of Easton, village after village, pleasant farm-houses, large 
farms and orchards, beautiful pastoral scenery, broad and fertile valleys and 
uplands, abrupt bluffs and precipices, great boulders tumbled down from the 
hillsides, palisade rocks, on, on to the Delaware W^ater Gap. 

Wild streamlets in the Catskills, fed as they flow downward by nameless 
streams, the Mohawk and the Popacton unite their waters at Hancock, (the 
Indians called the place Shehawkan, "the wedding of the waters,") where they 
become the Delaware, winding crookedly along a hundred and fifty miles, 
lighting field and forest, dividing New Jersey and Pennsylvania, receiving the 
waters of the Lackawaxen, whose wild ravines echo the songs of raftsmen, the 
waters of the Bushkill, and Brodhead's and Marshall's creeks, — home of the 
speckled trout, — coming along with a quiet current, it turns suddenly to the 
eastward at the base of the Kittatinny, where it cuts its way through the Blue 
Ridge. The Gap is about two miles long, a narrow gorge between w^alls of 



THE DELAWARE. 



i8i 



rock sixteen hundred feet high, and so near together at the south-eastern 
entrance that there is scarcely room for the railroad. The bluffs on each side 
are bold and precipitous, and all the surroundings are magnificendy picturesque. 
What first broke through the Gap? The Indians used to call the countrj- above 
for miles Minisink, "the water is gone;" but what water? What great inland 
lake? We know not. Only He know^s. "He putteth forth his hand upon the 
rocks: He overturneth the 
mountains by the roots: He 
cutteth out rivers among the 
rocks: He seeth every precious 
thing." Further up is Bushkill 
village. Here the 
Fall," a large 
volume of water, 
flows through a 
rocky gorge a 




HIGH F.ALLS, DI.NG.M.VN'S CREEK. 



distance of si.xty 
feet, and near 
by is a beautiful 
ittle cascade, 
called "Pond 
Run Fall." They 
are two miles back, the first being 
on the Little Bushkill creek. The 
road on the Pennsylvania side of 
the Delaware is remarkably good. 
Notched from the mountain side, — 
it is made of shale, which packs 
as hard as stone, and only a few 
shovelfuls of it taken from the sides 
are needed to keep it in repair. 



iS2 A CENTURY AFTER. 

From Bushkill to Milford the scenery is exceedingly beautiful. It is populous 
with creeks which rise among the hills and mountains and come tumbling over 
the rocks. Among the finest of these, the "Indian-Ladder Fall," about four 
miles from Dingman's Ferry, pours, step by step, stair by stair, through narrow, 
water-worn gorges, until it finally glides over the breast of a great rock, and 
reaching the level of the valley calmly completes its journey to the river. 

Dingman's Ferry, which was formerly called "Dingman's Choice," was named 
after a family that settled there before the Revolution. It kept the even tenor 
of its way a long time, content with its one store, its post office and inn, and its 
fifteen or twenty houses, a slow, poky place, similar to many others in the 
county of Pike. Nature has done but little for those who delve its sterile soil, 
which yields a scanty return, but has done much for the lovers of beautiful 
scenery, which she has scattered here with an unsparing hand. About fifteen 
years ago the Rev. Mr. Newman, a clergyman of Milford, came down near 
Dingman's Ferry, and began to build on the bank of the river a dwelling-house 
and an academy. He died before they were finished, and his widow, left to her 
own resources, was not above taking boarders. The first of these, as we may 
suppose, were artists who were drawn thither by the beauty of the scenery, and 
detained there by their enchanting vocation. They were followed speedily by 
other artists, from far and near, who were glad to take up their abode with the 
widow Newman. Dingman's Ferry awoke to its own importance at last, and is 
now, with its increased accommodations, annually crowded with summer boarders. 
When it can be reached by rail it will be one of the most popular summering- 
places in the State, and it will owe its rise to the widow Newman and her 
boarders, who were the means of making it known. A little below the village 
we see the ferry and its flat-boat, which, by an arrangement of wire ropes and 
pulleys, is made to cross by the action of the current against the boat. 

Dingman's High Falls, on Dingman's creek, a mile and a half back of the village, 
come from an elevation of one hundred and seventy-five feet in a succession 
of leaps, the general effect of which is heightened by the shapes that the water 
takes at different angles. Sheets of water of almost unbroken transparency 
reveal the presence of an under-current behind them. Where two currents meet 
and cross each other the water is webbed and lace-like. But whatever the effect, 
it is deepened into a snowy whiteness where the different masses pour in a 
confused and broken race over the rouo-h face of the rock, and taking- a sudden 
turn to the right plunge into the pool at the base. At the foot of the first 
leap from the top, in the level surface of the slate rock, a well has been 



THE DELAWARE. 



183 



cut by natural agencies, to a depth of eight feet, with a diameter of five or 
six feet. 

Hereabout there is a fall one hundred and sixty feet in height, called the 
"Soap Trough;" a litde brooklet that joins the larger creek, it falls from top to 
bottom in a continuous mass of soapy foam. The "trough" which receives it is 
cut out in solid blocks from the side of the hill. 

There are at Adams' brook, which is a short distance above the widow 
Newman's, a series of beautiful falls. We reach them by descending to the 
bed of the brook, — a charming walk over a mossy turf, and under trees that 
intertwine overhead. We pass cascade after cascade, — "Freedom Fall," "Vestibule," 




EDDY AT NEWMAN'S, DINGMAN'S FERRY. 



"Sanctuary," "Reynard," "Moss Fall," — who knows how many we pass? Adams' 
brook is a delightful place, and parties come from as far as Milford, and picnic 
in its shady nooks. 

Below Adams' brook is the "Eddy," a large, lake-like sweep of the Delaware, 
about two miles in extent from the upper to the lower rift. In the spring and 
fall the lumbermen take advantage of the high water, and float their rafts down 
the stream, where a strong current sets towards the Pennsylvania side of the 
river. The swirl of this current enables them to lay their rafts next the shore, 
and have what they sorelj' need — a good night's rest. 



PHASES OF SOCIAL LIFE. 



WHEREVER a great city is, extremes meet. London has, in stor3^ its 
St. James and its St. Giles, New York its Fifth avenue and Five Points, 
and Philadelphia, with its Walnut street, has its Alaska street, its Baker street, 
and its St. Mary street. These last suggest to a Philadelphian all that the 
words squalor, filth, misery, and degradation can convey. All great cities have 
their slums, as they have their cesspools and sewers, and the latter have the 
advantage in that they are sometimes cleared out, while the slums never are. If 
the Almshouse was full, Moyamensing was full, the House of Refuge was full, 
the House of Correction was full, Alaska street, Baker street, and St. Mary street 
would still have a numerous, a riotous, a promiscuous, and a muck-begetting 
population of blacks and whites. Whence do they come, how do they live, and 
whither are they all going? The question is too large to be answered at once, 
involving, as it does, statistics of nativity, statistics of labor or idleness, and 
statistics, — no, not statistics, but the assertion of creeds, with which we refuse 
to concern ourselves. They are here, this motley multitude, and they live. We 
have reason to believe that we are not so bad as some of the coast cities. The 
foreign element is probably better here than the foreign element in New York; 
the colored element, we should say, was better also. It must be considerably 
larger and, possibly, it is older. We find in our records that it had the habit, 
a hundred and sixty odd years ago, of meeting every evening on the steps of 
the court-house and sitting there with its milk-pails and making itself a nuisance 
to our ancestors, who ordered it, through the proper authorities, to disperse half 
an hour after sunset, or be arrested by the constables. It was so numerous 
and apparently so industrious, eight years later, that certain white persons who 
had emigrated hither for the purpose, as they said, of earning their livelihood, 
and who professed to be poor and honest, petitioned and hoped that a law would 
be prepared for the prevention of employment to the blacks. The world has 
moved and many of our degraded whites and blacks with it — into St. Mary street. 
Which of the Marys was the street named after? If it was Mary Magdalen, 
she has a large sisterhood here; may they be equally repentant. But we must 
not cast stones. "There goes John We.sley," the great Methodist said, as he 



PHASES OF SOCIAL LIFE. 



185 



saw a poor wretch on the way to execution; "there goes John Wesley, but for 
the grace of God." Remember this, ni)- lady, when you think, if you ever do 
think, of your abandoned sisters. The grace of God, which sometimes takes 
the shape of every goodly thing that the carnal heart can desire, has come to 
you; the curse of the Devil has come to them, in the shape of temptation, 
idleness, drunkenness, theft, perhaps murder, and death. Quaint old Fuller 
called the negro the image of God in ebony; if he were alive now he mio-ht 
call some white people images of the Devil in ivory. To return, however, to 



>;;i!^iSW''-"'""--^' 




SCENE IN ST. MARY STREET. 



i86 A CENTURY AFTER. 

our black sheep in St. Mary's fold. We see them here in the warm and 
unfragrant months, of all ages, all colors, (for there is a sprinkling, sometimes 
a shower, of disreputable whites among them,) all conditions, except prosperity, 
all characters, except good ones, all faiths, and all known infidelities. Old 
darkey women in tlie cellar-wa)'s, young darkey children in everybody's way, 
crawling on the narrow sidewalks, sitting and lying on the curbstones, standing 
in the streets, teasing the hens on the swill-barrels, the goats that browse on 
old truck, pla)-ing with clogs and dead mice, whistling, shouting, crying, mayhap; 
grown-up darkeys, the ton of St. Mary's, in cheap finery, with cheap luxurj-, 
Rose with a feather in her hat, Pompey with a Centennial cigar in his capacious 
mouth; old, grizzled darkeys of both sexes; bad young darkeys chucking bad 
young white girls under the chin (white girls having pitchers ol beer); darkeys 
in the door, on the cellar-door, on the coal-box, under the lamp-post, around the 
corner, laughing, whooping, cursing, blaspheming; darkeys, darkeys everywhere. 
Who feeds these black sheep? How do they paj' for their bread, when they 
have any, for their pigs' feet and tripe, for their whisky, which they will have? 
There is an old saying, that one-half the world don't know how the other 
half live. It is the truth, but not the whole truth, for it should contain the cynical 
addendum — and don't care, either. What do we prim Pharisees know, or care to 
know, about the lives of these poor publicans and sinners? Where does the 
money come from, for money they must have, to buy their crusts and scraps? 
Originally procured by begging, these refuse cold victuals are sorted and sold to 
the shops about, which sell them to these poor souls, who somehow have money 
enough to buy them. The air of business which pervades portions of these dusky, 
dirty, slatternly, ragged neighborhoods along Seventh street, from South to Fitzwater 
street, is surprising. There are whisky shops, of course, and shops where they 
obtain "choice wines," (fresh from the Devil's own vineyards,) and gin-shops, not 
so palatial as those of London, — dens in which every sort of liquid damnation can 
be had. But you must pay for it, you bibulous, sable race. "Pay, honey." "Pay 
to-day, and trust to-morrow." A curious feature hereabouts is the abundance of 
oyster wagons on the corners, where you often see pecunious darkeys "takin' 
'em on de haf-shell, sar." The relation of poverty to oysters has been pointed 
out by Dickens, and verified by many since. Given a poor neighborhood, the 
result is oysters, of which the poor never seem to have enough. They are 
luxuries, you know, expensive, and not filling. Consequendy, the poor devour 
them. The junk-shops do a thriving business, also the "old-clo' " stores, where 
you may see a bloated white woman bartering with the black storekeeper for 



PHASES OF SOCIAL LIFE. 




SOUP-HOUSE— EXTERIOR. 



an old shawl or gown or bonnet, which was once second-hand, but is now 
fourth or fifth hand. Who knows, my lady, but that rumpled, crumpled old 
bonnet was not worn by you once upon a time? You gave it to your maid, 
who gave it to your washer-woman, who, you ma)' be sure, never gave it to any- 
body, but sold it for the creature comfort that comes and goes in a botde. All 
these old clothes have a history, and whatever it is, it is going to be worse. 
When they are not worn to entire rags they arc still serviceable, for, like 
imperial Ceesar, (you know the quotation,) they can stop a hole to keep the 
wind away. Are they happy, these poor creatures? Happiness, my dear sir, or 
madam, is merely relative. Neither you, nor we, could be happy in their places. 
Could Dives, whom we take to have been as respectable as he was wealthy — could 
that patriarchal Hebrew nabob have been happy in the place of poor Lazarus? 
No, not if he had known that the final end of both would have been changed, 



i88 A CENTURY AFTER. 

SO that Lazarus would have begged the drop of water of him as he lolled 
back luxuriously in the roomy bosom of Father Abraham. There is, no doubt, 
a good deal of misery in the lower strata of this colored population, but there is, 
no doubt, a good deal of enjoyment also. They are a gay, light-hearted, volatile 
race, grown-up children, pleased with their rattles and tickled with their straws, 
indolent, thoughtless, careless creatures. Their tropical African blood will always 
assert itself. They are better, however, than the degraded whites among them, 
who in most cases had farther to fall than they. The roots of their vices do not 
appear to strike so deep, probably because the mental soil is more shallow; and 
they have less consciousness of morals. They are more uncalculating, more 
emotional, have more humor and sense of enjoyment. He must be a low-down 
darkey, indeed, who is not superior to the white trash that consorts with him. 

The greater the city the greater the poverty there, and the greater the 
charity. The charity is as certain as the poverty. John Bull grumbles at the 
money he spends on his poor, but he spends it all the same. We give without 
grumbling, and more freely than any people alive. One must be an American in 
order to understand the liberality of Americans; he must also be an inhabitant 
of a city like Philadelphia or New York. No countryman can understand it, for 
he never sees such and so much distress as we city-folk are familiar with, and 
perhaps hardened to. It lasts the whole year through with the idle, the thriftless, 
the chronically unfortunate; and it always increases in the winter months, for it 
is then that the manufacturer discovers he is running, or will soon be running, 
at a loss. He has too many hands; some of them must be discharged. They 
are thrown out of work just when they need it most. If they have saved a 
little money in the summer, they tide over a few weeks, and then are in want. 
They must be helped, for there is no work for them. They seek it, though, if 
they are manly, independent artisans. The poet Burns, who was a worker all 
his life, and a hard one, too, said or wrote, perhaps, in his letters, that in his 
opinion, about the saddest sight on earth was a man looking for work. He was 
right; it is a sad sight, as you must see when you come to think about it. It 
is not only the man himself who is to suffer privation, — he could bear his share 
of that, — it is the hostacjes he has mven to fortune, his wife and children. What 
will become of them, he thinks, as he trudges about the streets in his fruitless 
search for employment. The mouths at home must be fed; but how? It is a 
cold, heardess world, is it.^ My good man, you are mistaken. You are hungry 
and so are your wife and children? You must do as others do, then: you must 
accept charity. Go to the Bedford Street Mission. You can't bear to do it? Of 



PHASES OF SOCIAL LIFE. 



189 



course not, if you have any pride left; but put your pride in your pocket, for 
you have nothing else there, and go. State your name, occupation, residence, 
the number of adults and children in your family, (all trul)-, mind,) and you 
will be furnished with tickets on the soup-house in Griscom street. Present 
yourself there between 11 A. M. and i P. M. You will f:nd the soup and 
bread good; so will your wife and children, when you take their rations home to 
them. To a spectator, not given to sentimentality, but not averse to charitable 




SOUP-IIOUSF. — INTKKIOR. 



feelings, our soup-houses are a curious study. Their temporary tenantry, which 
is of the most miscellaneous character, comes and goes daily during the hours of 
distribution. Some of it has seen better days; some of it is old and care-worn; 
some of it is young and thoughdess; a little of it is American, more of it is 
Celtic, and a fair percentage of it is colored. There are old men whom want 
forces to bring their grandchildren thither; old women who are alone in the 
v/orld; ragged children, who nibble their bread on the street, and tidy children 



IQO 



A CENTURY AFTER. 



who take their bread and soup home. Groups like these, repeated every few 
minutes with different additions, which need not be described, are a fair exhibit 
of the exterior of a winter soup-house. Within, where the soup is made, where 
the cook is, a motley crowd stands waiting until their pails and pitchers are filled, 
sniffing the steaming odor, — eager, but not disorderly, and certainly expectant. 
Stir the ketde, Dinah, and ladle out the soup. LitUe Pat and Kate and Black 
Jake are hungry. Old Pat and Biddy are hungry. "Ladle out de soup, chile, 
for dey am berry hungry. Sure's you lib, sar." The soup-house on Griscom 
street, the oldest, by the way, in the city, is where the Bedford Street Mission 
attends to its outside charity. At home its charities are different and permanent. 
The Mission preserves the memory of a street whose nomenclature no longer exists. 
It is now called Alaska street, probably in answer to a petition of our naturalized 
seals. The Bedford Street Mission was founded in 1853, and is supported by 
voluntary contributions, which have increased from an average of two thousand 
dollars during the first five years to, in round numbers, thirteen thousand six 
hundred dollars in 1874-75. Its specialties are to discriminate between the 
deserving poor, and imposters and professional beggars; to educate the young in 
habits of industry, morality, and religion; and to prevent pestilence and the spread 
of epidemics by furnishing the means of cleanliness for person and premises. It 
knows no race, no color. It has a Sabbath-school, a day-school, and an industrial 
school. It has educated in its day-schools, from 1853 to March, 1874, twenty-eight 
hundred children, in its Sabbath-schools, fifteen hundred children, besides placing 
two hundred and thirty children in homes. From April, 1874, to March, 1875, it 
had over three hundred Sunday scholars, nearly five hundred day scholars, and 
nearly one hundred girls in its industrial school. These children were of 
American, German, Irish, English, Italian, and French parentage, the Irish leading 
in point of numbers, and the French furnishing only two scholars. They were 
Protestants, Catholics, Jews. It is a pretty sight to see them in the day-schools, 
with their books and slates, reading, reciting, ciphering, — a little crowd of faces, 
many of which are handsome, and all of which are clean. They are well 
controlled, though the discipline is not severe to the smallest ones. They arc 
taught at meals to fold their hands and say grace; they are taught in the 
industrial school to make their own clothes; and in the Sunday-school they are 
taught to be reverent at prayer. Evening entertainments are given at the 
Mission to the Sunday scholars and their parents and older relatives, and are 
enjoyed hugely. They sing, and very prettily; they recite, with due emphasis and 
discretion; they witness the wonders of science as illustrated by the sciopticon. 



PHASES OF SOCIAL LIFE. 







BEDFOKIJ STREET MISSION SCHOOL. 



and, what probably interests them more, feats of legerdemain, hocus-pocus, the 
black art, or whatever is the current name for it, from the deft fingers of such an 
experienced magician as Signer Blitz. It is a treat to watch their faces when the 
handkerchief, burned before their eyes, is restored whole; when eggs, fruit, flowers, 
are taken out of an empty hat; above all, when money, not his or hers, is found 
in the pocket of some lucky child! A Mission must have a Missionary, who in 
this instance is the Rev. John D. Long. He lives in the Mission widi his lamily, 
in the midst of vice and misery. What this vice and misery are may be guessed 
when we state that, within a circuit of two squares here, there were one hundred 
and thirty-five groggeries thirteen years ago, and diat last year seventy-three 
were still left. Where eroeeeries abound at diis rate, there must be privation 
and ignorance, — children to be taught, men and women to be helped. Let us 
look a little into the work of the Mission. It has free baths, (the first one of 
which was built by Mrs. Long, the wife of the Missionary,) and in these baths, in 
eight years, over eighty thousand persons have enjoyed the advantages of water. 



192 



A CENTURY AFTER. 



If cleanliness is next to godliness, what an army of dirty sinners was sweetened 
and sanctified! There were nineteen thousand of them last year, the men being, 
of course, in the minority, the women a little better, the boys coming out about 
two thousand ahead of the girls. (We should not have thought it, girls! But 
perhaps fewer of you needed washing.) To continue with other statistics. The 
Mission has furnished in four years over three thousand lodgings; has given in 
eight years nearly twenty thousand free dinners to children; and has given 
during that time food and clothing to over eleven thousand persons. About 
one hundred and twenty thousand unfortunates have passed through and 
received aid from the Mission since its organization. Attached to the Mission is 



.^4^^l^ ~ C5:.a;i* 




"LORD, GRANT THAT WHETHER WE EAT OR DRINK, OR WHATEVER 
WE DO, MAY WE DO ALL TO THY GLORY. AMEN." 



a committee of ladies, who meet weekly for the purpose of making-up clothing. 
The ladies interest themselves largely in June, when they give a festival at 
Horticultural Hall. This is supported by donations in money, flowers, cakes, 
fruit, sugar, cream, and strawberries, and is profitable, the net proceeds in 1874 
being over six hundred dollars. On the 15th of June comes the annual picnic, 
when the children and their teachers, numbering hundreds, are transported to 
the grounds, free of charge, by the West Chester and Philadelphia Railroad 
Company. If the Mission is good to the children, everybody is good to the 
Mission. 




CHARITABLE INSTITUTIONS. 



194 A CENTURY AFTER. 

The charitable institutions of Philadelphia, of which we have had a glimpse 
in the Bedford Street Mission, are second to none in America. The majority 
of them, like the Mission, were created to provide for the physical wants of the 
poor. These are numerous, and likely to be perpetual, for we have the sad 
assurance of the Divine Master that the poor are to be always with us. But 
there are other wants than physical ones native to poverty, and in many cases, 
if not the immediate, at least the remote, causes of poverty. They pertain to 
the intellectual nature of the poor, and may be summed up in the one word — 
Ignorance. They are ignorant because they are poor, and are poor because 
they are ignorant. How far the sovereignty of the individual should go, and 
how far the sovereignty of the State should go, is not so difficult a question as 
it may seem at first. If one could be born and could grow up, could live and 
could die in entire isolation from every other human being, his sovereignty over 
himself could be absolute; but this condition of life is impossible, and absolute 
self-sovereignty is therefore impossible. We must live among our kind, and 
must shape ourselves accordingly. You must shape yourselves or be shaped, 
says the family, the community, the State. You cannot be allowed to live as 
you seem to like to, — certainly as many of you do, — in squalor, in ignorance, in 
crime. It is not for your good, and it is not for our good. We demand, says 
the State, the greatest good for the greatest number. We prefer to persuade 
you, brethren, if you can be persuaded; if not, we shall be obliged to compel 
you. We have found that schools are much cheaper than prisons. 

We started with our charitable institutions. Let us look at a few of them 
in our imaginary ramble through the city. If we are Baptists, we find the 
beneficence of our sect represented in the Baptist Home, at the corner of 
Seventeenth and Norris streets. It is a substantial, handsome building, built upon 
ground which was given for its site by one who was in sympathy with its object, 
which is to furnish a home for aged members of the Baptist denomination. If 
we are Catholics, we find one of our charities at the corner of Eighteenth and 
Jefferson streets. It is a home for our aged poor of both sexes, who are well 
lodged within its massive walls and whose spiritual welfare is cared for in the 
beautiful chapel that is attached. It is conducted by the Little Sisters of the 
Poor, who are doing a good work. If we are followers of John Wesley, we 
go to the Methodist Home, though not, it is to be hoped, as almoners on the 
bounty of our brethren. If we are Presbyterians, and interested in our poor 
old widows and spinsters, there is a fine building at the corner of Fifty-eighth 
street and Greenway avenue, where two hundred of them are housed in their 



PHASES OF SOCIAL LIFE. 







GIRARD COLLEGE. 



necessitous old age. If we are widows, poor widows, and are obliged to part 
with our children for a time, we take them to the Foster Home, near the 
House of Refuge, which, happily, they have escaped. We leave them there 
until we can reclaim them, and they are safely sheltered. If we are poor 
orphans, (which heaven forbid!) our poor relatives take us to the Burd Orphan 
Asylum, in West Philadelphia, on the Delaware count)- line, where we have a 
glimpse of the country. We have a Northern Home for Friendless Children, 
which, we trust, is never full, — for what is more dreadful than for children to be 
friendless? We have a Home for Aged Colored Persons, and we have, on 
Thirty-ninth street, an Old Man's Home. We certainly do something for our 
poor, — young and old, sick and well, black and white, — with and without religion. 
And we have named but a tithe of our charitable institutions. 

Philadelphia owes much to two men, of whom one may be said to have 
been the Genius of Commerce, and the other the Genius of Common Sense, 
They were contemporaries for thirteen years, though their walks of life were 
as far apart as the continents which gave them birth. One was a printer, — 
Benjamin Franklin; the other a mariner, — a mariner and merchant, — Stephen 
Girard. The English pride themselves on some of their charitable institutions: 
on Christ Hospital, for example, which Edward the Sixth founded, in his sixteenth 
year, for poor, fatherless children, moved thereto by the eloquence of Bishop 
Ridley, and on the Charter House, which good old Thomas Sutton endowed 



196 A CENTURY AFTER. 

in the year of his death, as an asylum for the aged and a school-house for the 
young. These are respectable fogy institutions, no doubt, but we venture to 
think that they are not to be compared with Girard College. Christ's Hospital 
opened with three hundred and forty scholars; in less than thirty years the 
number dwindled to one hundred and fifty, and to-day is not over two hundred. 
Amono- the poor, fatherless children it has educated are Hunt, Lamb, and 
Coleridge, three famous Blue Coat boys, of whom the fathers of two were living 
when they entered it. The Charter House, which grandfather John is pleased to 
consider the greatest gift in England — either in Protestant or Catholic times — 
ever bestowed by any individual, has not fulfilled the intention of its founder, 
at least as regards its scholars, or Thackeray could not have been educated 
within its walls. He had a fortune, and he went from the Charter House to 
Trinity College. The wishes of the English king and the English merchant 
have been disregarded: the trust, the will of our mariner and merchant, remains 
unbroken. 

He was a remarkable man; enterprising, courageous, far-sighted, public-spirited, 
wisely and grandly charitable. The story of his life is soon told and generally 
incorrectly. Born in Bordeaux, in the middle of the last century, the eldest son 
of a sea-captain, who neglected his education while he sent his younger brothers 
to college, his early life was a hard one. There was a step-mother in the Girard 
family, you see; the lad, before he was fourteen, left home, with the consent of 
his parents, — step-mother's given gladly, of course, — with the determination of 
becoming a mariner. He went as a sailor to San Domingo, returned home, and 
sailed again and again, during the next nine years, to the French possessions in 
the West Indies. He knew what he was about, this ignorant sailor-boy. He 
perfected himself in practical navigation and astronomy, rose grade by grade, 
from the fo'castle to the cabin, all the while studying mercantile operations 
in connection with the people of the West Indies. Certain French nautical 
formalities, which need not be specified, were waived in his behalf, and before 
he was twenty-three, Stephen Girard, of Bordeaux, was given full authority to 
act as captain, master, and patron of a merchant-vessel. Partly on his own 
credit, and partly on the credit of his father, who, we suppose, saw something 
in him now, he purchased goods to the amount of sixteen thousand livres (say 
three thousand dollars) and started for San Domingo on his first mercantile 
adventure. It was a success. He converted the proceeds into produce, and 
sailing for the United States, landed at New York. His shrewdness in disposing 
of his cargo attracted the notice of a New York merchant, who assisted him in 



PHASES OF SOCIAL LIFE. 



197 



his future operations, probably sharing in his gains. During the next three 
years he sailed and traded between New York, New Orleans, and Port au Prince, 
first as mate on a French ship and afterwards as master and part owner of a 
small vessel and cargo. In the month of May, 1777, Girard entered the waters 
of the Delaware and arrived at Philadelphia. He resolved now to abandon the 
dangerous profession of mariner for the less hazardous and more profitable one 
of merchant; so he rented a store on Water street and married. On the 
approach of the British he left, with his wife, for Mount Holly, in the Jerseys, 
where he bought a small property, and where he remained until Philadelphia 
was evacuated, when he returned. He now directed his attention to the West 
Indies, entering into partnership with one of his brothers, who was residing in 
San Domingo. His business prospered, but his life was unhappy. He had 
married in haste and was repenting at leisure. Before he was thirty-five, his wife 
began to grow deranged, and he was obliged to place her in the Pennsylvania 
Hospital. He removed her, after a time, to the country, in the hope that she 
might recover her reason. His home became so painful that he determined to 
return to his old vocation, and his brother coming to Philadelphia to manage the 
business, he sailed for Charleston and the Mediterranean in a brig that he had 
built a few years before. He returned, after an absence of two years, and 
found his wife so much worse that she had to be placed in the hospital again. 
There she oave birth to a daughter, who soon died, and there she remained 
for twenty-five years, mad to the last. Childless and worse than wifeless, the 
indomitable merchant pursued his calling. If he had a cool head he had a 
courageous heart. His courage, his humanity, were soon to be tested. In July, 
1793, the yellow fever broke out in Water street, between Arch and Race 
streets. Extending north to Vine street, it was communicated to Front street 
and thence to the parallel streets and the streets that crossed them. North, 
south, east, west, the dreadful pestilence spread. It could not be stopped. All 
who had the means fled in dismay. Nurses for the sick and men to bury the 
dead could not be found. Parents and children, husbands and wives, died 
deserted and alone. Public buildines were closed; most of the churches were 
shut up; grass grew in the streets. It was the city of thf plague, — the city 
of death and desolation. In September there was a call for hclj) in the only 
paper that continued to be published. All the visitors of the poor, except three, 
it stated, were dead or had fled. Four da)s later a committee of twenty-seven 
volunteered. It rapidly lessened to the apostolic number of twelve, whose care 
was directed to the hospital at Bush Hill, which was without order or regulation, 



igS 



A CENTURY AFTER. 



unclean, and in want of qualified attendants. Money could not obtain, had not 
obtained them. What was to be done? If there are always thousands of 
cowards, there are always brave men. Two stepped forward, one of whom was 
Girard. He and his colleague, Peter Helm, went at once to Bush Hill. Order 
came out of the confusion, cleanliness out of the filth, attendants and nurses 
were had, supplies were provided, and the next day the hospital was reported 
ready. The will of Girard had overcome all obstacles. He was the active 



Wm -^^^^^^ 




GIRLS NORMAL SCHOOL. 



director of the hospital, and for sixt)' days discharged his duties like the lowest 
servant there. He did more, he and the committee, for they raised upon their 
own individual credit the necessary funds; supplied the poor with money, 
provisions, and fire-wood; furnished burial for the dead, and took care of nearly 
two hundred children, many of them infants, whose parents and relatives had 
perished. Philadelphia seemed doomed at first, for in seventy days over four 
thousand persons were interred in its burying-grounds. It was about one-sixth 



PHASES OF SOCIAL LIFE. 



199 



of the population, the whole of which might have gone but for the courage of 
Helm and Girard. 

When and how millions are made are questions which even millionaires 
might fail to answer satisfactorily. The prudent ones, unlike Beau Brummell, 
say nothing about their failures, but let the world magnify their successes. 
Girard was a bold and large operator, making great losses and great gains, 
the gains in the end predominating. The foundation of the bulk of his fortune 
was laid after he was forty-three, say between the year of the yellow fever and 
the war of 1S12. He built a fleet of vessels, which he named after certain French 
philosophers in vogue in his early manhood, — Voltaire, Rousseau, Helvetius, — and 
dispatched them on long voyages, which were a series of commercial exchanges. 
"The grain or cotton of this country, with which his staunch ships were freighted, 
was exchanged with the Lisbon trader or the merchant of Bordeaux, for the 
fruits of the one or the wines of the other, in order to pay the Russian for the 
iron or hemp which the same vessel brought back to him, or the sugar and 
coffee of the West Indies furnished him at Hamburg or Amsterdam with the 
outward cargo, or the Spanish dollars which were to procure him, at the Spice 
Islands, Calcutta, or Canton, the product of those climes, and thus bring to 
his doors, from each distant portion of the globe, the added riches of the 
world." When Girard was sixty, the relations of England and the United States 
threatened war. They concerned him to the extent of a million of dollars, 
which were in the hands of the Barings, whose solvency was in doubt. How 
to withdraw this money was the problem. He solved it by purchasing in 
England United States Government stock and shares of the Bank of the 

o 

United States, and when its charter expired by purchasing its banking-house 
and becoming a banker. Girard, the banker, was still Girard, the merchant. 
His ships traded with China, the East Indies, the north of Europe, — wherever 
they had traded before. He commanded success out of his reverses of fortune, 
for he occasionally had reverses, like other fallible human beings. Here is 
an instance of his pluck and luck: — One of his ships, with a valuable China 
cargo on board, sailed from Canton before her master had heard of the war 
with England. She reached the capes of the Delaware without meeting a 
British cruiser or speaking a vessel that could warn her of her danger, and 
off the capes, at night, while firing for a pilot, was detected by a small 
schooner, tender to a British man-of-war, which small schooner, about the 
size of a wood shallop, went out in the morning and captured her. Girard 
opened negotiations with the commander of the British squadron, ransomed 



A CENTURY AFTER. 




UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 



her for a hundred and eighty thousand dollars in coin, and brought her to 
Philadelphia, where her cargo realized an immense profit, most of her teas 
bringing, at auction, over two dollars a pound. When the Government 
needed money during the war, Girard placed the resources of his bank at its 
disposal. In 1814 a loan of five millions was sorely needed. He stepped 
forward and took the whole amount. Is it too much to say that this action 
helped to win the victories which followed and brought about peace, — the peace 
which Girard predicted would consolidate our independence forever? He stepped 
forward again when the Government could not pay its interest on the national 
debt, and said that those who had any claim for interest on public stock ought 
to wait for a more favorable moment for payment, or at least receive payment 
in treasury notes. "Should you be under the necessity of resorting to either 
of those plans," he wrote to the Secretary of the Treasury, "as one of the 
public creditors I shall not murmur." 



PHASES OF SOCIAL LIFE. 201 

Busy as he was with his banking and his merchantry, Girard knew how 
to make time to do what he wished outside of both. He had a fondness for 
agriculture, and cultivated a farm in the vicinit)^ of Philadelphia, to which he 
made frequent visits, and which he managed with the skill that distinguished 
him in other matters. Few of his ships sailed for foreign ports without 
taking orders for choice plants, seeds, and fruits, which, when obtained, were 
transplanted to his farm, and thence to the neighborhood. If the man who 
plants a tree is a benefactor to those who succeed him, how much more he 
who transplants from distant lands new varieties of fruits and flowers. It was 
not merely in agriculture and horticulture that Girard benefited the city of 
his adoption. He was an early friend to every judicious public improvement. 
He loaned large amounts of money to, and purchased large amounts of stock 
in, the Schuylkill Navigation Company. They were grateful enough to desire 
his portrait, and asked him to sit for it; but he refused, for whatever his faults, 
vanity was not among them. A cautious man, or he could not have made his 
millions, his ear and purse were open to real distress, and he gave freely, when 
asked, towards the erection of churches and charitable institutions. 

Girard lived under the roof that covered his counting-house, in a close, 
narrow street, in the midst of stores, near the river. Everything about the 
man was characteristic of the man. Abstemious and regular, he was a severe 
worker and an early riser. "When I rise in the morning," he once wrote, "my 
only effort is to labor so hard during the day that when the night comes I may 
be enabled to sleep soundly." So lived, labored, and prospered Stephen Girard, 
until he was well on in his eighty-second year. In the winter of 1S30 he was 
thrown down by a vehicle and severely injured about the head. He rallied and 
was nearly as well as before, when, in December, 1831, he was attacked by 
an influenza, which resulted in pneumonia. The last few days of his life were 
passed in unconsciousness. While Christmas was kept merrily he was dying. 
The next day, in the afternoon, he was dead. He had refused, in his life-time, 
to have his portrait painted; after his death he could not refuse the public 
honors which were bestowed upon his remains four days later. The flags of 
the public buildings and shipping were at half-mast, and all the authorities and 
thousands of citizens attended his funeral. 

Girard's will is a remarkable document, which need not be gone into here, 
further than to say that it is marked by great public spirit towards Pennsylvania, 
to which he left, in round figures, over nine hundred thousand dollars, for the 
different charitable institutions in and around Philadelphia, for the improvement 




HOSPITALS. 



PHASES OF SOCIAL LIFE. 203 

of its Delaware front, and for the internal improvements of the State. Of his 
legacies to his relatives nothing need be said, except that they thought them 
insufficient, and tried to break his will; nor of his legacies to his servants, 
apprentices, and sea-captains. What concerns us, outside of these and other 
legacies and gifts, is his magnificent bequest of two millions of dollars for the 
erection of Girard College, and of the residue of his real and personal estate for 
its maintenance. Its object was the education of male white orphans, who were to 
remain in its precincts until they should arrive, respectively, between fourteen 
and eighteen years of age. Preference was to be given, first, to orphans born 
in Philadelphia; second, to those born in any other part of Pennsylvania, and 
lastly, in New York and New Orleans. They were to be fed with plain and 
wholesome food, clothed with plain but decent apparel, and lodged in a plain 
but safe manner. Their education was to be sound, not showy, — the branches 
being specified, — and when it was finished, they were to be bound by the mayor, 
aldermen, and citizens of Philadelphia, to suitable occupations. The practical 
character of Girard was stamped everywhere in the plans for the college which 
bears his name. The corner-stone was laid on the 4th of July, 1833, and the 
college was finished and transferred to its directors on the 15th of December, 
1847. On January ist, 1S48, it was opened with a class of one hundred orphans, 
who had previously been admitted. Eight months later, one hundred more were 
admitted, and in June of the following year, one hundred more. In 1874, the 
number had increased to five hundred and fifty. The net income of the Girard 
estate during that year was about four hundred thousand dollars, of which about 
one hundred and seventy-five thousand were expended in maintaining and 
educating the orphans, in repairing the college buildings, and in improving 
the grounds and keeping them in order. Girard College is familiar to all 
Philadelphians, and to most visitors to the city, who, beholding its massive marble 
roof and its noble range of pillars, are not content with a mere architectural 
view of it. The body of Girard was disinterred in 1851, and placed in a 
sarcophagus in the college, where it now remains. 

Fifty-four years before Girard arrived at Philadelphia, there landed at the 
Market street wharf, one autumnal Sunday morning, a young man of seventeen 
or eighteen. He was in his working-dress, his best clothes being on the way 
to him by sea, and he was dirty from his journey. His capital consisted of a 
Dutch dollar and about a .shilling in coppers. He did not know a soul in the 
place, nor where to find a lodging or obtain food. He stopped at a baker's 
shop, on Second street, and purchased three puffy rolls, with which he sauntered 



204 A CENTURY AFTER. 

along, eating one and carrying the others under his arms. Gentihty suggested, 
perhaps, that he should pocket those he was not munching, but he could not 
do it, for his pockets were stuffed with dirty shirts and stockings. How he 
wandered up and down the streets, and entered a church, where he fell asleep, 
was never forgotten by him, nor by any reader of his delightful Life. Before 
many years were over, this young man — the printer, Benjamin Franklin — became 
a power in Philadelphia. It was through his exertions that the first library 
was started here, and he may be said to be the founder of the University of 
Pennsylvania, which grew out of an academy established by him in 1749. He 
stated in his plan that it was intended "as a foundation upon which posterity 
would erect a seminary more extensive and suitable to future circumstances." 
Twenty-four well-known citizens agreed to act as trustees, and in a few weeks 
the sum of two thousand pounds, payable in five years, was subscribed, and 
eight hundred pounds were borrowed to set the academy in operation. At 
the beginning of the next year the Latin and Greek, the mathematical and 
English schools were opened, besides a charity school for the education of 
sixty boys and thirty girls. The success of the academy was assured from 
the first, so earnest was the zeal and so untiring the energy of Franklin, 
who, busy as he was, acted as its secretary. He was now a person of 
note; was known as the author of "Poor Richard's Almanac;" had been the 
postmaster of Philadelphia; had discovered electricity, and was postmaster-general 
of the British Colonies. Through his personal influence, students came from 
distant places, and through the assistance of powerful friends a charter of 
corporation was procured, in 1755, from Thomas and Richard Penn, for the 
"College, Academy, and Charity School of Philadelphia." While negotiations 
for this charter were in progress, Franklin opened a correspondence with 
Dr. William Smith, a learned man, interested in collegiate institutions, who 
was induced by him to join the new foundation, — of which he was famous as 
provost. Dr. Smith visited England in 1762 in behalf of the college, and raised 
a large sum of money for it, Thomas Penn contributing four thousand five 
hundred pounds and two thousand five hundred acres of land in the county 
of Bucks. By a course of anatomy two years afterwards. Dr. William Shippen 
laid, in this college, the foundation of the first medical school in America. The 
next year the trustees appointed him professor of anatomy, Dr. John Morgan 
becoming professor of the institutes of medicine. Other professors, in succeeding 
years, were Dr. Adam Kuhn, who was elected to the chair of botany, and 
Dr. Benjamin Rush, who was elected to the chair of chemistry. In 1773 three 



FN ASUS OF SOCIAL LIFE. 




VOUNG MEN S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION BUILDING. 



hundred pupils were instructed in the collegiate, medical, and academic schools. 
The loyalty of the college was called in question during the Revolution, and 
in 1779 the Legislature of Pennsylvania abrogated its charter and appointed a 
new board of trustees. It granted a new charter, however, erecting the college 
into a university; but the academy separated from it, and remained a distinct 
institution until 1791, when both united again. The University occupied its old 
home on Fourth street, below Arch street, until iSoo, when it removed to Ninth 
street, between Market and Chestnut streets. The purchase by the Government 
of the ground occupied by it here for a new post-office, made another removal 
necessary, and resulted in the cluster of beautiful structures at West Philadelphia, 
now devoted to the University of Pennsylvania. Briefly described, the outward 
walls are of serpentine stone; the coping, buttresses, and gables of Ohio stone, 
and the columns, which support the porch at the main entrance, are of polished 
Scotch granite. The first and last impression received from these towered, 
imposing, collegiate buildings is, that they are a noble specimen of modern 



2o6 A CENTURY AFTER. 

Gothic architecture. Truly, the Httle germ sown by FrankHn in the academy 
has expanded, in the University, into a magnificent growth of law, medicine, 
science, and the arts. The department of medicine was nearly coeval with the 
establishment of the academy; the department of law was added before the 
close of the last century; the departments of science and the arts are of modern 
origin. With regard to the department of medicine and the education received 
therein, it is enough to say that the reputation of the physicians of Philadelphia 
has always stood high, and the reputation of the lawyers of Philadelphia, — why, 
the phrase, "a Philadelphia lawyer," has long been a synonym for legal ability. 
Shordy after the academy was started, Dr. Thomas Bond applied to his friend 
Franklin to assist him in procuring subscriptions for a hospital in Philadelphia. 
Franklin wrote about the project in the newspapers, but subscriptions were not 
forthcoming. A memorial was then addressed to the Provincial Assembly, asking 
for assistance, and a charter to the corporators. The bill passed in 1751, 
incorporating the Pennsylvania Hospital, and granting two thousand pounds 
towards the erection and maintenance of its buildings, provided a like amount 
should be raised for a permanent fund. Franklin, Bond, and Richard Peters 
were on the board of managers, who transmitted to England an address to 
Thomas and Richard Penn, asking them to grant a plot of ground on which 
to build the hospital. They named a suitable site, which did not meet the 
views of the Penns, who offered, however, to grant them another site, which 
was declined. A private house was then taken as a temporary hospital, and was 
occupied about four years. Despairing of aid from the Penns, the managers 
purchased, in 1754, the whole of the square on which the hospital now stands, 
except a depth of sixty feet on Spruce street, which was granted them a few 
years later, with an annuity of forty pounds. A building was planned, and 
the corner-stone laid, with an inscription by Franklin. It was so far completed 
in December, 1756, that patients were admitted. Contributions flowed in, 
sometimes abundantly. Whitefield collected for it one hundred and seventy 
pounds after one of his sermons; and a subscription among "rich widows and 
other single women" for the payment of drugs, amounted to over one hundred 
pounds. Within the first thirty years, five thousand pounds were raised at home 
and abroad; from other provinces, the West Indies, and the Friends in the 
mother country. That the hospital flourished is evident from the minutes 
of the board of managers in April, 1776, wherein the whole capital stock, 
not including the buildings and the lot on which they stood, is estimated at 
over twenty-one thousand pounds. The consideration of what should be done 



FHASES OF SOCIAL LIFE. 



with the fees of the students, laid the 
foundation of a fine medical library, 
the nucleus of the existing library, 
which twenty-five years ago was pro- 
nounced unequaled in this country. 
The hospital suffered from party bit- 
terness during the Revolution, and 
suffered from the British, who took 
possession of its wards, beds, and 
instruments for their own use. In 
1780, the legislature made its im- 
poverished managers the apparently 
munificent orant of ten thousand 
pounds, the value of which, in that 
period of depressed currency, was 
one hundred and sixty-three pounds 
eighteen shillings and eight pence. 
Upwards of eight thousand pounds 
of the capital of the hospital were 
lost durinof the Revolution, while the 
expenses, which were greatly reduced, 
were double the annual income. Be- 
fore the war closed only seventy-seven 
patients were received in the year 
1 789, of whom forty-nine were paying 
ones. But better days were at hand; 
for in 1792 and 1796 the managers 
were allowed, through legislative 

action, upwards of seventy thousand dollars. They erected the western wing 
in the latter year, and commenced the central building, but such was the cost 
of the materials, and the slow payments of their grant, it was not completed 
till 1805. Previous to this, John Penn, the grandson of the Founder, presented a 
bronzed statue of his great ancestor, which was placed in the centre of the south 
lawn. In the same year the managers of the hospital wrote to Benjamin West, 
and solicited a picture from him. He recognized the claims of his countrymen, 
if he was the favorite painter of George the Third, and promised a picture, 
which, long in coming, came at last, in 1817. It was his "Christ healing the 




FOUNTAIN — RITTENHOUSE SQUARE. 



2o8 A CENTURY AFTER. 

sick." It was exhibited for tlie benefit of tlie hospital, and added to its 
funds some fifteen thousand dollars. It is estimated that about one hundred 
thousand patients have been admitted to the Pennsylvania Hospital since its first 
foundation, and that one-half this number were supported during their illness 
entirely by the institution. Among other institutions of a similar character, 
we may mention Christ Church Hospital, the Episcopal Hospital, St. Joseph's 
Hospital, the Presbyterian Hospital, the City Hospital, the German Hospital, 
and the University Hospital. Christ Church Hospital was fortunate from the 
beo-inning. One of its earliest patrons, Joseph Dobbins, of South Carolina, gave 
to its managers the square between Spruce, Pine, Eighteenth, and Nineteenth 
streets, which was sold for one hundred and eighty thousand dollars, and at his 
death, which occurred at Charleston, in 1804, he bequeathed to it all his real and 
personal estate, consisting of shares in the Bank of South Carolina and other 
property, amounting to about sixty thousand dollars. His bequest was to poor 
and distressed widows, but its meaning was afterwards enlarged, so as to include 
indigent females of the Episcopal church. Christ Church Hospital — a beautiful 
brown-stone building — stands on Belmont avenue, near the limits of Fairmount 
Park. St. Joseph's Hospital, which stands on Girard avenue, between Sixteenth 
and Seventeenth streets, is an example of what a hospital should be. Catholic, 
in that it is directed by the Sisters of Charity, it is catholic in the widest 
sense, — in that men of all religions and of no religion, when sick and injured, 
are kindly nursed and cared for. The University Hospital — a branch of the 
University of Pennsylvania — stands on the University grounds, south of the 
department of arts. It is built upon a plot of ground which was given by the 
city on condition that it maintained fifty free beds for the sick poor. 

Philadelphia has a right to be proud of its free schools. The plan which 
underlies them and the system by which they are conducted date back to 181 8. 
Their early history, if it were written, would be a eulogy on the far-sighted 
men who, in spite of formidable opposition, succeeded, after many struggles, in 
enorafting popular education on the municipal government. After sixteen years 
of experiment, change, alteration, and improvement, the legislature enacted a 
general law establishing free schools throughout the State. From that day they 
have steadily increased, but not to the same extent in Philadelphia as in the 
rural districts; for the annual increase of dwellings here, which is estimated 
at five thousand, is not met by a corresponding increase of schools. A few 
figures from the last annual report of the Board of Public Education, covering 
the year 1874, and comprising Philadelphia alone, may probably be interesting. 



PHASES OF SOCIAL LIFE. 




WEST WALNUT STREET. 



and are certainly worthy of attention. There are in the city proper four 
hundred and sixty-five schools, of which sixty are grammar schools, one hundred 
and twenty-one secondary schools, two hundred and twelve primary schools, 
twenty-nine consolidated schools, forty-one night schools, besides the Central 
High School and the Girls' Normal School. The attendance of pupils in the 
day schools was over ninety thousand, and in the night schools over sixteen 
thousand; the number of teachers in the day schools was over one thousand 
seven hundred, and in the night schools over two hundred. The amount of 
money appropriated by the C\\^J Councils for the use of the Board of Education 
was over one million six hundred thousand dollars, and the expenditures within 
about thirty thousand dollars of that amount. A careful examination of the 
course of study pursued in these schools — beginning with the lowest and ending 
with the hitrhest — discloses its excellence and the wisdom that determined it. 



2IO A CENTURY AFTER. 

The enlarged and graded course of the High School, for example, is as 
comprehensive as that adopted by the highest colleges. The same may be 
said of the studies in the Girls' Normal School, which has enrolled in less 
than thirty years over four thousand pupils, of whom over two thousand have 
become teachers. The average daily attendance in 1874 was five hundred and 
eio-hty-two scholars. This number will be more than doubled when the school 
shall have quitted its narrow quarters on Sergeant street for the new building 
which is being erected for it at the corner of Seventeenth and Spring Garden 
streets. It is a beautiful structure of brown stone, with sandstone facings and 
trimmings, and an ornate Mansard roof. It will accommodate one thousand two 
hundred pupils, and will contain a laboratory and an observatory. 

The Younof Men's Christian Association has outgrown its old rooms on 
Chestnut street, above Twelfth, and is erecting a new building on the south-east 
corner of Chestnut and Fifteenth streets. It extends from Chestnut to Sansom 
street, and when finished will be five stories in height, including the Mansard 
roof The walls are of Ohio stone, with buff trimmings; the base is of 
Cape Ann granite, and the principal openings are embellished with shafts of 
polished Scotch granite. The main entrance to the building is on Fifteenth 
street, where a vaulted porch leads through a tower about one hundred 
feet high into the hall, which contains the grand staircase and the elevator. 
Ascending the grand staircase, we find on the north side of the hall the 
chief rooms of the association, and on the south side the audience-room, 
which, with its galleries, will seat fifteen hundred people. The good that this 
institution has accomplished cannot be stated statistically. It is large, and likely 
to be larger, for the world moves, and never backward, in morals. 

From the mission of to-day to the academy of the last century, through 
hospitals and schools, until we find ourselves here. Let us rest after the 
journey, by taking a quiet stroll in the neighborhood. If we go to Rittenhouse 
Square, we can contrast the splendid mansions which surround it with the 
tumble-down dens of Alaska street. If we are loth to do that, we can listen 
to the splashing of the fountain and congratulate ourselves that there is no 
lack of these silvery shafts — obelisks of purity — in our beautiful city. We 
proceed, perhaps, to Walnut street, between Eighteenth and Nineteenth streets, 
where, looking west, we see the sunshine brightening the comfortable houses 
on the right, and breaking on the left along the Episcopal Church of the Holy 
Trinity. It is a pleasant place here; much too pleasant to be invaded by the 
roar of business, which is fast turning Chestnut street into Bedlam. 



FAIRMOUNT PARK. 




THE spell which Fairmount exercises over those who are familiar with its 
beauty may be summed up in a couplet. It was written a little over a 
hundred years ago by a queer young Irishman, who had rambled for awhile 
about the continent, — nobody seems to know exactly why, — and who, on his 
return to England, had settled down into a bookseller's hack, — the most 
charming hack that ever illustrated literature. He wrote prose and poetry 
better than any man of his day; and among his poems was one descriptive 
of his rambles, entitled "The Traveler." With his usual want of sense, this 
person, Mr. Oliver Goldsmith, sought no patron for his poem, but dedicated 
it — like the simpleton he was — to his brother, a poor country clergyman. 



"Where'er I roam, whatever rcahiis I see, 
My heart untravcled fondly turns to thee.' 



212 A CENTURY AFTER. 

The couplet often recurs to us while we are pursuing our daily avocations, and 
never more strongly than when we wander along the crowded streets of a poor 
neighborhood. We must have a glimpse of nature, we say to ourselves; we 
must have a walk in Fairmount. Where there's a will there's a way, so we 
soon find our way to the Green street gate. We pass the Art Gallery without 
entering, for just at present we care nothing about pictures, — patriotic, scriptural, 
allegorical, or otherwise, — and fohowing the rnain promenade, we come in sight 
of a marble pedestal, upon which sits, in bronze, the effigy of a man. We 
saw one such, you remember, at Laurel Hill, and a self-satisfied effigy it was. 
Very different is the man before us, — thoughtful, serious, melancholy. He filled 
an exalted position in his life-time, and since his death has passed into the 
history of his time as the man of the people. 

"One of the people! Born to be 
Their curious epitome: 

To share, yet rise above, 

Their shifting hate and love. 
Common his mind, (it seemed so then,) 
His thoughts the thoughts of other men : 

Plain were his words, and poor, — 

But now they will endure! 
No hasty fool, of stubborn will, 
But prudent, cautious, pliant still: 

Who, since his work was good, 

Would do it as he could. 
Doubting, was not ashamed to doubt, 
And, lacking prescience, went without: 

Often appeared to halt, 

And was, of course, at fault; 
Heard all opinions, nothing loth, 
And, loving both sides, angered both: 

Was — not like Justice, blind. 

But watchful, clement, kind. 
No hero this of Roman mould; 
Nor like our stately sires of old: 

Perhaps he was not great — 

But he preserved the State ! 
O honest face, which all men knew ! 
O tender heart, but known to few ! 

O wonder of the age, 

Cut off by tragic rage!" 

Honor to Abraham Lincoln! What shall we say of the statue of Lincoln? We 
might say something for it, and something against it, though nothing against it 
when it is compared with its hideous counterpart in New York. No famous 
man of modern times was less heroic in appearance than Lincoln. He was tall, 
gaunt, clumsily-made, everything, in a word, that ideal art shrinks from. If we 



FAIRMOUNT PARK. 



213 



consider the difficulty of the 
task which was imposed 
upon the sculptor when he 
set to work on a model of 
Lincoln, we see that it has 
been met and overcome. 
The likeness is excellent, 
and the posture is natural 
and easy. Which one of 
President Lincoln's official 
acts will be decided of most 
importance by posterity, we 
can only conjecture. Con- 
temporary judgment sug- 
gests his Proclamation of 
Emancipation. It is this, 
therefore, that the statue of 
Mr. Rogers suggests, as far 
as a statue can; and it was 
on the anniversary of the 
Proclamation, September 
22d, 1870, that the Lincoln 
statue was unveiled in die 
presence of fifty thousand 
people, who were what they 
inscribed themselves on one 
of the pedestal, "a grateful 
South speaks there. The East 
the eastern face: — "Let us here 
the government of the people, 
for the people, shall not perish 
from the face of the earth." The North speaks on 
the northern face: — "I do order and declare that all 
persons held as slaves within the States in rebellion 
are, and henceforth shall be, free." The West speaks on the western face:— 
"With malice towards none, with charity towards all. with firmness in the right 
as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we are in." The work 




TERRACES— LEMON HILL. 



214 A CENTURY AFTER. 

is finished, thank God! and North, South, East, and West are one again, — "one 
and indivisible," — hke the Colonies which laid the foundation of the Republic a 
hundred years ago. 

We pass the Lincoln statue, which stands at the foot of Lemon Hill, and 
stroll along the plateau to the right We are surrounded by picturesqueness, 
for nature and art strive to excel each other here. It was a favorite spot with 
the Founder, who lavished his sylvan taste upon it, in the shape of walnuts, 
hawthorns, hazels, and fruit trees, which he sent from England; trees, shrubs, 
rare seed, and roots, which he sent from Maryland; and grapes, which he sent 
from France. He also directed that the most beautiful wild flowers of the woods 
should be transplanted hither. They flourished, except the grapes, which were 
remembered, however, in the early name of the place, — "Old Vineyard Hill." A 
century or so later it was known as "The Hills." Under this last name it became 
historic ground, chiefly through our great Revolutionary financier, Robert Morris, 
who resided here for twenty-eight years. He had a fine house in town, but it 
was his habit to dine at the Hills on Sunday. He gave grand dinners, and had 
the grandest company, — statesmen, soldiers, heroic hearts, the great men of the 
time. We see them, in thought, walking through the grounds, but not in the 
mansion at the Hills. It has gone, and the Hills have gone. We have now the 
present mansion, which was built later, and we have Lemon Hill. We have 
passed the little fountain and the goldfish glancing about in its basin, and 
have ascended the flight of stone steps on the sides of the terrace. The view to 
right and left along the slopes of verdure on the eastern front, and the flowering 
shrubs, japonicas, lilacs, and the like, is a beautiful one. There is an elegance 
in shapely terraces, well-made walks, and level lawns which Nature seldom attains 
when left to itself Shall we follow the stream of pleasure-seekers which flow 
around us, and, mounting the steps of the old mansion, saunter on the broad 
piazza, which has a fine outlook; or shall we loiter, as many are doing, near the 
pavilion and listen to the playing of the band? The music is good, but not 
the best, — not Beethoven's or Mozart's, which would be lost, perhaps, in that 
dolce far niente. Opera bouffe does not tempt us, so we stroll on, beneath the 
old trees, pines, oaks, horse-chestnuts, until we find a spot that suits us, — a 
banqueting-place for our minds. 

The Park here is literally a banqueting-place, for it is given up, in summer, 
to innumerable little family picnics. They start early in the morning, these happy 
families, mothers and children, master and miss in their teens, little masters and 
misses only a few summers old. Aunt Rachel, grandmamma, — they all start, and 



FAIR MOUNT PARK. 



215 



the Park reached, they wend their way from the horse-cars, and coming to 
Lemon Hill, as we have, they resolutely leave the crowd and pick out a 
cosy spot where there are trees, and where they can see the sparkling 
Schuylkill. They are here already, under the 
shady trees, on whose branches they have hung 
their bonnets and parasols, 
and Master Tom's little hat. 
Mother has not yet laid 







aside her matronly care, 
daughter is thinking of a 
young gentleman who may 
possibly join the party 



,.;;■■; ^^w 'k'.-' •'^' *' ■ . < 



FAMILY PICNIC. 



before the day is over; 
while the children are 
thoughtless and careless 
and as merry as grigs. 



They romp, they run, they dance, play tag, ball, — what games in vogue do 
they not play? — and go where they please. It is Liberty Hall everywhere, 
which it would not be if Fairmount were the Central Park. When the 
sun gets towards the nooning, papa and, perhaps, grandpapa make their 
appearance in time for lunch. The cloth is laid, the baskets are opened, the 
dishes are set, the lunch is brought out, and they begin. The journey, the 
fresh air, the absence of the city, — something has sharpened their appetites 



2l6 



A CENTURY AFTER. 



wonderfully. Bread and butter, fried chickens, cake disappear with unparalleled 
celerity. Presto! the lunch is gone. Papa now lights his cigar, and reads his 
newspaper, or a book, — most likely his book. Mamma and the girls gather up 
the dishes, and the children fall to romping as before. What Roman emperor 
was it who said he had lost a day? If he were alive now, and picnicking here, he 
would confess that he had found his lost day. The sun is setting behind the hills 
of the West Park, and group after group wend their way back to the horse-cars. 
Their baskets are lighter than they were in the morning; their spirits are high. 
This is one way of going to and returning from Lemon Hill. Another way is to 
take a boat in the morning, and row your party up the river until you find a spot 
you like, where you land, and have your picnic. You have an hour or two to 
spare afterwards, so you return to the boat, and row the ladies up the river. If 
you are an amateur oarsman, you are ambitious to show off You are going to 
let them see how close you can sail in the wake of the steamer as it goes 
paddling away towards Rockland. Take Punch's advice, Jason, — "don't." The 
boat will wabble, Medea will be ducked, and you will catch a crab and look 
foolish. A pleasant way of ending the day is to start before sunset, and row as 
far as the Falls, where you can get a supper of catfish, broiled chicken, and 
waffles. Refreshed and strengthened with these, Jason, you can return by 
moonlight. You can say then all the soft nothings that come in your head, 
and sing any sentimental song you may remember. Medea will not be critical. 



m. 



MP- 



^- 







T.\KIXG THE W.WES. 



FAIRMOUNT PARK. 217 

A few years hence, when she has }our brood about her knee — but we must not 
drift into Mythology. 

Among the light, elegant accomplishments which ha\e obtained a foothold 
among us in the past ten or twenty years, none has become so popular as the 
charming out-door sport of croquet. We suppose it came from England last, 
and from France first: but whatever its origin, we wanted it, and adopted it at 
once. It was a pleasant summer pastime for the country; it called out just 
emulation enough to make it interesting, and required just exercise enough to 
make it healthy. Children were not too young for it, nor grown folks too old: 
it was suited alike to the rich and the poor. The ladies like it, because it 
shows them to great advantage — a tricksy spirit, playing hide-and-seek with 
their charms. It discovers a tiny rosebud among the lilies of Clementina, and it 
ripens the buds of Lucilla into full-blown roses. Tom, Dick, and Harry, stalwart 
men that they are, find themselves the better for it. It requires less skill than 
billiards, and it supplies more fun; it is less absorbing, and more social. On a 
fine summer afternoon the broad lawns of Lemon Hill are crowded with players 
and spectators, and a very pretty picture the different groups make, — the gay 
dresses of the ladies contrasting with the sober grays and blacks of their 
companions, and the movements of both with the grass under their feet, the 
trees around, and the sky overhead. Let us watch them as they play croquet.' 
Lucilla is interested in the o-ame, no doubt, but not enouoh to foro-et herself 
for a moment. Note the studied grace of her motions as she grasps her mallet 
and calculates the anorle of the ball; she will hit the stake without deranoino- a 
fold of drapery or a tress of hair. Is she playing the game of hearts as 
well as croquet? Certainly, for she is a young and beautiful woman, a born 
coquette. She covets admiration, adoration. Clementina is as artful in her 
seeming negligence, and more dangerous on account of it. Fresh, confiding, 
tender-hearted, (ah, minx!) every man of us flatters himself that he is the 
favored lover. Is it not so? Young Croesus peers askance through his 
eyeglass, and Fred Fineboy looks as if he would like to knock somebody 
about Avith his mallet. Pshaw, lads, you have the game in your own hands. 
"Crabbed age and youth cannot live together." Good-by, young people. We are 
going among the elders, who, like yourselves, are playing croquet at Lemon Hill. 
They are of the sterner sex, and they bring to the sport the skill with which 
they play billiards, and put stocks up and down. It is a match game, and the 
players are experts; money will change hands among' them and the spectators, but 
it will not be ours. We came out for pleasure, and this, look you, is business. 



A CENTURY AFTER. 



-. V *,V'^ 



:^ 



'> 



'*=^ 



S, H 



^^^ 




CROQUET. 



Let us go elsewhere — but 
where? Not to Mount Pleasant, 
for we were there not lone aeo, 
nor to Strawberry Mansion, nor 
Laurel Hill; but to the Wissa- 
hickon, a long and pleasant drive, in which we shall pass these places in 
the East Park, keeping the river in sight all tlie while, and the wooded slopes 
of the West Park until they end on the heights of Chamouni. A greater 
contrast than exists between Fairmount and the Wissahickon cannot well be 



FA JRMO UN T FAR K. 



219 



imagined. We leave a region of broad lawns, rolling uplands and ravines, and 
rocky river banks, and enter a long, narrow valle)*, hedged in by steep hills 
studded from top to bottom with oaks, maples, and chestnuts. The scenery is 
of the most primeval character, the valley being a natural gorge, through which 
a litde creek or river works its way. It is a quiet stream, with scarcely a ripple 
on its current, e.xcept when it is swollen Vv'ith heavy rains in spring and autumn. 
The precipitous sides of the gorge are covered with wild forest trees and vines, 
which PTOw down to and overhang; the water's ed^e alonsf its whole extent. 
The further we advance the wilder the view; ever)- turn and bend reveals new 
elements and strange combinations of romantic picturesqueness. 

The Wissahickon retains its Indian name, or rather names, for it seems to 
have had two, each equally descriptive of it, \'iz., Wisamickan, "Catfish creek," 
and Wisaucksickan, "yellow-colored stream." It was a favorite haunt with the 
Indian tribe that dwelt hereabout, — the Leni Lenape, or original people, a 
race, says Heckewelder, who were in his time the same that they were from the 
beginning, and were acknowledged by nearly forty tribes as their grandfathers. 
Their possessions originally extended from the highest sources of the Delaware 
and the Susquehanna, the lower Minnisink being their headquarters. At last their 
supremacy, which was acknowledged for centuries, was disputed by the tribes 
known as the Six Nations, who, about the middle of the last century, succeeded, by 
the assistance of the whites, in driving them from their ancient hunting-grounds. 
The conquest of the Delawares, as they were then called, and their exile from the 
valley of the Delaware, is a melancholy episode in aboriginal history. The last 
council is called; no fire is kindled; no song of mirth is heard. The corn and 
dried venison are collected; the tribe is ready to depart. The aged chief steps 
forward and speaks: — "Let us take a last, lingering look as the departing rays of 
light are shed upon the Blue Hills, and then go hence to that strange land, 
whilst the sun sleeps behind the mountain that the white robber may not laugh 
at our tears." The Leni Lenape are gone, but they have left their memory 
along the banks of the Wissahickon, dividing its traditions with those of the 
early German settlers. The advent of the Founder, and the freedom of belief 
which he represented, attracted in his train a thoughtful, independent element 
from the German people. Its first exponent was Pastorius, who sailed from 
England with a shipload of his countrymen early in 1683, and after being chased, 
as they feared, by the cruel and enslaving Turks, landed at Philadelphia on the 
twentieth day of the sixth month. Philadelphia, which then consisted of three 
or four litde cottages, was surrounded by woods, in which he frequently lost 



A CENTURY AFTER. 




himself in travel- 
ing from the water- 
side to the house 
of a friend. Within two 
months after his landing, 
he purchased from the 
Founder, for himself and the Frankfort 
Company, of which he was the agent, 
nearly six thousand acres of land. Upon 
this land, which was a portion of the Springettsbury 
manor, Germantown was commenced. Its name was indicative 
of the nationality of the first inhabitants, who were also 
called Palatines. It grew so rapidly that in 1689 it was incorporated into a 
borough-town, Pastorius being its first bailiff; and it claims the honor of erecting, 
a year or two later, the first paper-mill in the New World. This was built 
by William Rittenhouse, or Rittinghausen, a Hollander, who had carried on 



SPHINX ROCK. 



FAIRMOUNT PARK. 221 

the business of paper-making in his own country. Gabriel Thomas, who came 
from England in the ship "John and Sarah," in 16S1, and who resided in 
Pennsylvania about fifteen years — old Gabriel Thomas sa)s, in 1696, that all 
sorts of good paper were made in the German town, as well as fine German 
linen. And Pastorius, writing in 17 18, says, that God had made of a desert 
an enclosed garden, and the plantations about it a fruitful field. Germantown 
was a very^ primitive place. The houses were made of logs, the interstices 
being filled with river rushes mixed with clay; they were plastered inside with 
clay and straw, over which was spread a thin coat of lime. They were 
one-story, and so low that a man six feet high could touch the roof; they 
stood with their orable-ends to the road, and their roofs, which were hicdi and 
hipped, were occasionally tiled. Rude and homely as they were, they were 
palatial when compared with the caves in which Pastorius lodged at his landing. 
They were the dwellings of the commonalty; his own house, at Chestnut Hill, 
was such as befitted a member of Assembly and a bailiff not to say a scholar, 
which he was, writing Latin, we are quaintly told, in a good hand. He left a 
work in manuscript, entitled "The Bee," and "A Description of Pennsylvania," which 
was published in Holland. Oblivion claimed it long ago, but hath spared us thus 
much knowledge of its author, Francis Daniel Pastorius, who died about 1720. 

While Pastorius and his hardy Palatines were clearing away the woods at 
Chestnut Hill, and raising log-houses at Germantown, and grist-mills and 
paper-mills along the Wissahickon, there was growing up a German youth, in 
Siebenburgen, in Transylvania. His name was Johann Kelpius, and his family, 
tradition says, was noble. All that we know of him is, that he was a student of 
Dr. Fabritius, of Helmstadt; that he learned Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and English; 
that he was a reader of the mystical philosophers; and that he emigrated to 
Pennsylvania in 1694. With him came more than forty others, most of whom 
were in easy circumstances, men of learning like himself, and whose object, like 
his, was to increase their piety by leading solitary lives. They arrived among 
their countrymen at Germantown, where they were said to have shone "as a 
peculiar light," but they setded chiefly on the Ridge, the range of hills on the 
west bank of the Wissahickon. They called themselves the Society of the 
Woman in the Wilderness. Kelpius was their leader. They believed in celibacy 
and the approach of the Millennium. Kelpius was certain that he should not die 
before he saw the Millennium. But he was mistaken. He died in 1708, at the 
age of thirt>'-five, sitting in his garden and attended by his children — spiritual 
children, and those he taught gratis, who wept as for the loss of a father. 



222 A CENTURY AFTER. 

Kelpius was a learned man, as learning went then, and his writings, which 
are confined to manuscript, are said to be acute, except as regards the 
peculiar religious opinions entertained by him. They were an outgrowth of the 
period, derived, probably, from the works of Jacob Boehme, and as such may be 
interesting to the student of religious thought, but not to the world at large, 
which has outgrown mystical interpretations of the Scriptures. Kelpius professed 
love and charity for all, and desired to live without a name or sect. The Society 
of the Woman in the Wilderness held together until his death, when the bands 
that had bound the brotherhood were loosened. Woman out of the wilderness 
was too much for them. They no longer looked for the Millennium, but consoled 
themselves by marrying. The work of Kelpius was continued, after a fashion, 
by three of his disciples, Conrad Mathias, Christopher Witt, (a doctor of medicine, 
who believed in astrology and other exploded tomfooleries,) and John Seelig. 
Seelig came over with Kelpius, whom he survived thirty-seven years, dying 
in 1 745, at the ripe age of seventy-seven. He lived a hermit, like his master, 
and wore the coarsest garments. Such, in brief, were the early worthies of 
Germantown and the Wissahickon, concerning whom, should he desire further 
information, we refer the reader to the antiquarian sketches of Mr. Horatio Gates 
Jones, and the rambling pages of gossipy old Watson. 

Just above Falls Bridge, on the left of the river drive of the East Park, we 
pass the Sphinx Rock, which possesses the merit, not common in these natural 
monuments, of somewhat resembling the antique figure from which it is named. 
What riddle does this forest Sphinx propound to us, and what would come to it 
if we should happen to guess it? We shall not tr)-, for we have no wish to see 
it plunging from the precipitous bank into the river. Hereabouts, on the edge 
of the sloping bank, there is a platform in the spreading branches of an old 
tree. It is near a beer garden, by whose host it was erected, probably at the 
suggestion of some bibulous customers, who wanted to have a high old time 
there. Is the lager any better up yonder, Hans, than it is down here? He 
does not answer, — perhaps he does not hear, but he orders more beer, which is a 
sufficient answer to one who is athirst. Hans and Carl and Louis frequent, in fine 
weather, the neighboring Schuetzen Park. They come with Gretchen and Maria 
and Pauline, sweethearts and wives and children, (a true Kindergarten this,) 
and enjoy themselves in the old German fashion, eating, drinking, and making 
merry. Yesterday the Turners were here: to-morrow, may be, they will have 
a Schuetzenfest. If there were one hundred holida)'s in the year they would 
manage to keep them all. When pleasure is in order, they go a-pleasuring: 



FA IRMO UNT FA RK. 



223 



when labor is in order, they labor like men. Provident, thrifty, indefatigable, 
they are an example to our native citizens in the matter of work as well as 
play. Descendants of the same earnest race as Kelpius, they have outgrown 
the ascetic follies of the Pietists, the Hermits of the Ridge, and the Tunkers; 
and if they occasionally make pilgrimages here, they come, not like the last, 
through the woods, silently, following each other in Indian file, with the hoods of 







PLATFORM IN TREE. 



their gray surtouts drawn over their heads, barefooted, with cords around their 
waists, but in their holiday attire, noisy, jubilant, everywhere at home. Jacob 
Bcehme has given place to Prince Bismarck, and Dr. Martin Luther to Lager. 

We have passed Wissahickon Hall, where we can obtain ices and other 
light diets in summer, and catfish and coffee at all seasons, and further on, 
Maple Spring Hotel, where we can satisfy the sense of the grotesque with 
Father Smith's gnarled statuary, and can procure row-boats for as long or 
short a time as we may desire. We could not have taken this drive fifty years 
ago, for the Wissahickon was inaccessible then, except by by-roads and lanes. 
At the Ridge road below, for example, a mass of rock stood on one side and 
a precipice on the other; there was also a fall, ten or twelve feet in height, 
where the brawling creek emptied into the Schuylkill. Now there are good 
roads here, as we see, on either side, for when one side is too mountainous, 



224 ^ CENTURY AFTER. 

the drive deftly Crosses to the other. There is a bridge on the Ridge road, 
another at Rittenhouse street, and others above. Just below the Rittenhouse 
Street Bridge, on the west bank of the Wissahickon, is the Lover's Leap. The 
summit is reached by clambering the heights up a well-worn path and by 
keeping along the brow of a cliff, or, with greater labor and danger, by 
struggling up direcdy from its base. It overlooks a wild gorge and is fully 
two hundred feet above the level of the stream — a rugged steep of jutting 
rocks, shattered and splintered by frost and disintegrated by time. It requires 
some nerve to ascend it, ibr the rocks have, in some places, a sheer 
perpendicular descent of fifty or sixty feet. Kelpius is said to have carved 
his name on the face of the highest rock; but the act is not in keeping 
with his expressed wish to live without a name. If he carved it at all, it may 
have been in some ecstatic vision of the Woman in the Wilderness, "clothed 
with the sun, with the moon under her feet and the twelve stars on her 
forehead." However this may be, the inscription, if it ever existed, is no 
longer legible. The Lover's Leap is well known to artists, who are fond of 
sketching it and its surroundings, but it is seldom seen by ordinary visitors, 
who like to "do" the picturesque easily. The most characteristic features of 
the Wissahickon lie within a short distance — say five or eight hundred feet — 
of each other, in the immediate vicinity, but they are a book shut up, a 
fountain sealed, to most pleasure-seekers, who only know of them by hearsay, 
or catch a glimpse of them from the carriage drive. But the Lover's Leap — 
what story or tradition does it preserve? We are not told distinctly, but 
whatever the tradition or story, it doubtless concerned some amatory scion of 
the Leni Lenapes, possibly the Princess Winona, whose memory and misfortunes 
are preserved, however, in another Lover's Leap, near the Delaware Water 
Gap. But what matter who was done to death here? Wherever there are 
woods and rocks and falling waters, there is a Lover's Leap, a Devil's Pool, 
and a Bridal Veil. 

A quarter of a mile below the Lover's Leap there is a spring with which 
tradition has associated the name of Kelpius. It is about one hundred yards 
from the brow of a hill, which slopes towards the creek, and is reached by a 
lane, which passes through the woods above Maple Spring. It is carefully 
walled at the sides and back and overhead, either by the hands of Kelpius or 
his fellow-hermits, and a venerable cedar, which he is believed to have planted, 
grows out of and forms a part of the wall to the left and rear. Its roots twine 
among and strengthen the old masonry, neighboring therein the gnarled roots of 




LOVEK S LEAP. 



226 A CENTURY AFTER. 

a stunted dogwood. A short distance above this natural spring is, or was, 
a hut, which is said to have been the home of Kelpius. It stood upon the side 
of a steep, grassy hill, with a southerly exposure in winter, and was made of 
rough-hewn logs, the interstices of which were plastered over. It was neglected 
after his death; the walls tumbled down, and foxes burrowed in the cellar. 
From this last circumstance the name of the township, Rocksburrow, afterwards 
Roxborough, is said to have been derived. The cellar remained intact, in spite 
of the foxes, and at a later period a one-story house or hut was built upon it. 
This was occupied by Mistress Phcebe Ritter, a ' widow, who took in washing 
there, and who died some thirty years ago, over ninety years of age. 

Following the road upward, we reach a bend in the stream, where 
Paper-mill run joins it in a little series of waterfalls. Near the last of 
these, which has a perpendicular descent of twenty feet, stands the old house 
in which David Rittenhouse was born. A grandson of Garret Rittenhouse, — 
whose paper-mill was close by, — he was born in the same year as Washington. 
He worked on his father's farm in boyhood; but as he was often found 
with the plow idle in the furrow and the fence covered with figures, it was 
clear that his thoughts were elsewhere. When he was twelve he came in 
possession of the mathematical tools of a dead uncle, and a translation of 
Newton's "Principia." These determined his career. Before he was seventeen 
he made, without any assistance, a wooden clock, and before he was nineteen 
he discovered, also without any assistance, the method of fluxions. His father, 
at last, furnished him with a set of clock-maker's tools, and before he was of 
age he followed the trade of a clock-maker, rating his time by astronomical 
observations. The first work by which he became known, and which he 
constructed solely at night, — in his idle hours, as he called them, — was a 
great orrery, after a new and more, perfect plan than had hitherto obtained. 
When it was finished it was purchased by Princeton College, a second, after 
the same model, being purchased by the University of Pennsylvania. But 
before this, in 1763, he was commissioned by the proprietary government to 
measure the first and most difficult part of the boundary line, since known as 
Mason and Dixon's. He also determined the boundary line between New York, 
New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, as well as the boundaries of other colonies and 
States before and after the Revolution. In 1774 he was appointed to calculate 
the transit of Venus. He was State treasurer from 1777 to 1789, and two 
years later he succeeded Franklin as president of the American Philosophical 
Society; the next year he was appointed director of the Mint, and the year 



FAIRMOUNT PARK. 



227 



before his death was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London. He 
died in 1796, in his sixty-fifth year. Philosopher, astronomer, inventor, man 
of industry and probity, who had no time to get rich; such was the child 
of Dutch descent, Avho first saw the light in this old house. 




We follow the drive half a mile, and crossing the Red Bridge soon reach 
the Monastery. When and by whom it was erected antiquarians are not 
agreed. It appears to have been built about 1750, by Joseph Gorgas, a 
member of the Society of Tunkers. It was doubdess his intention to gather 
here and about himself a community of his own sect, and he probably did so, 
though not for any length of time, for in 1761 he removed to Germantown 
and sold the property. It passed through several hands till the beginning of 
the present century, when it was owned by a miller. It was afterwards used 



228 A CENTURY AFTER. 

as a paper-mill. Watson, who wrote about twenty years ago, states that its 
then owner converted it into a dwelling. He also states that this person, who 
was a manufacturer of flax thread and twine, closed many of the windows. 
Other changes were made by other occupants until it was left what it is now, 
a three-storied stone house with an old-fashioned hollow cornice. It stands on 
high ground, on the brow of a hill, with a range of hills towering above it. 
A lane winds round the bend of the bluff and climbing its steep side forms, 
in front, a semi-circular lawn. The outlook here, from the broad porch, and 
the uplook from the romantic dell below, are magnificent; for, what with the 
hills around and the great mossy rocks studded with stunted trees, Nature is 
in her wildest mood. Below, in the Willow Glen, there is a spot which is 
known as the Bapdstery. Tradition says that converts were baptized here by 
the brethren of the Monastery. They were called monks, and were probably 
Seventh-Day Baptists, similar to those who founded cloisters at Snow Hill 
and Ephrata. 

The Pipe Bridge crosses the Wissahickon about three miles and a half 
from its mouth. It spans the valley at an altitude of one hundred feet 
above the level of the stream, stretching from pier to pier in light festoons. 
It is of iron throughout, except the bases of the piers, which are set in 
masonry, and is a model of grace and strength. Its length is nearly seven 
hundred feet. Two twenty-inch mains, which form its top chords, convey the 
water supply of German town from the Roxborough to the Mount Airy 
reservoir. A little wooden bridge spans the river a short distance above 
the Pipe Bridge. Above that, on the east side, are Cresheim creek and the 
Devil's Pool, which we have seen, you remember; and above these is a stone 
bridge with strong buttresses, crossing which we are in sight of Valley Green 
Hotel. We can obtain refreshments at this favorite stopping-place and can 
hire boats, if so inclined, and row down to the mouth of Cresheim creek. 
But wherever we go and whatever we do, we must not forget to observe 
the effect of the bridge on the water. Its reflection is so perfect on fine 
days that we see an entire oval of masonry instead of a single arch and 
its mirrored shadows. The deception is marvelous. Half a mile further up 
we come to a marble fountain, which is rememberable as being the first 
drinking-fountain erected in Philadelphia. It stands in a sylvan spot, on the 
left of the road, among rocks, and is covered with ferns and wild flowers. 
A mountain spring constantly fills its basin. No wine so delicious in summer 
as its clear, cold, sparkling vintage. Earliest of all our fountains, whose name 




ON THb WISSAHICKON. 



230 A CENTURY AFTER. 

now is legion, it preserves the memory of John Cook, by whom it was erected 
eio-hteen years ago, and of Charles Magarge, the owner of the spring. It was 
erected, as the slab above declares, ''Pro bono publico." May the wish inscribed 
below, ''Esto perpetua" be fulfilled. 

We find fewer traces of the aborigines than we should have expected 
along the Wissahickon, and the traditions concerning them, when there are 
any, are vague and unsatisfactory. We passed one Indian locality, the Lover's 
Leap: we shall pass another, the Indian Rock. It is half a mile above the 
first fountain. The river there enters a deep gorge, whose sides are covered 
with woods, which repeat themselves in the dark mirror below. The water is so 
still that the rocks which are scattered up and down the creek create no ripples 
in its crystal current. Stillness broods everywhere — the silence of the unbroken 
forest. But yonder, on the summit of the eastern hills, rises the Indian Rock. 
It is square, with a deep hollow below it, and resembles a fire-place or a pulpit. 
Yes, it shall be a pulpit, and the rude figure of an Indian which stands out 
shall be a preacher. What sermons doth he preach in stone? And who is he? 
He was placed there, we are told, in memory of the last chief of the Leni 
Lenape. He lingered hereabout on his old hunting-grounds long after his tribe 
had gone. At last he too made up his mind to go, and gathering together his 
dusky remnants, forty souls, as the missionaries would say, mostly women, 
he departed, bag and baggage. We may fancy him striding away, with his 
blanket wrapped around him, and his tall feathers nodding, and the women 
following with the packs strapped to their backs, and, possibly, a papoose or 
two. Good-by, Tedyuscung, and good riddance. For if thou art he, as some 
believe, thou wert addicted to fire-water. Go thy crooked ways, bad Indian, 
or we will put thee in the stocks. 

A mile further on, and we have reached the northern limits of the Park. 
We cross a bridge here, and ascending a height are at Chestnut Hill, where 
many Philadelphians have summer residences, and a noble oudook over broad 
farm-lands and distant mountains. Historic ground lies hereabout, especially at 
Germantown. It is the morning of October 4th, 1777. The Bridsh have drawn 
their line across the Germantown road, and Washington is on the road from 
Metuchen Hills to attack them. Greene commands the left wing, which consists 
of the divisions of Wayne and Sullivan, the brigade of Conway, and the brigades 
of Nash and Maxwell. He is to attack the right wing of the British, and 
Armstrong the left wing, which rests on the Schuylkill. The night march is 
made in silence, and the morning, when it comes, is foggy. We surprise the 



FAIRMOUNT PARK. 



231 



pickets of the enemy, and fall upon his infantry. "Have at the bloodhounds!" 
They waver; the bugles sound a retreat. Cornwallis hears it in Philadelphia, and 
orders his grenadiers to march. Howe hears it in Germantown, and starting 
from his bed, dresses in haste, and tries to check the fugitives. It is only a 
scouting party, he says; but a shower of grape from our cannon sends him 
riding back to camp. In the meantime, Musgrave has thrown himself into 
Chew's house, with six companies, and barricaded the windows and doors. 










chew's mansion. 



We advance slowly, keeping up an incessant fire at every house and hedge 
that checks our pursuit. Washington comes with a part of the reserve, and 
Musgrave is commanded to surrender. His reply is a volley of musketry, 
which wounds the officer who carries the flag. The British blaze away at us, 
and our cannon are brought to bear, but they are too light to breach the walls. 
Washington leaves a regiment here, and rides to the front. But where is 
Greene all this time? He is three-quarters of an hour late, and his line of 



232 



A CENTURY AFTER. 



battle has to advance two miles through swamps and thickets. When he enters 
the village the enemy is prepared for him; he is outflanked. He is driven 
back. Woodford, on his extreme right, strays to Chew's house, where he halts, 
and orders his field-pieces to play upon it. W'hat is this new fire in our rear? 
ask the men of Wayne's division. It must be the British. They fall back. 
Washington, who is exposed to the hottest fire, sees that the day is lost, and 
gives the word to retreat. It is made in good order, and just in time, for a 
few minutes later he would have confronted the grenadiers of Cornwallis, who 
are approaching on the full run. So ends the batde of Germantown, of which 
the most interesting episode, for us, is the skirmish around Chew's house. 

But who is this that cometh, laden with parcels and packages, — a fugitive 
fleeing for his life, alarmed at the battle that is going on? Batde, fugitive, — 
you are dreaming. He is that happy man, a Germantown husband. It is his 
business, perhaps his pleasure, to go into Philadelphia on certain stated days of 
the week, and purchase there and bring home what his better-half needs for the 
household. It may be a basket of groceries; it is certain to be two or three 
bundles of dry goods; very likely it is a doll-baby for litde Seraphina. You 
didn't think of this, did you, Benedict, when you were paying attention to 
Beatrice? But take it easy, man; for as Ophelia says, "We know what w^e are, 
but know not what we may be." You might be worse than a good Germantown 
husband. 




ARTS AND SCIENCES. 



THE history of American art, if it were fully written, would be instructive in 
many ways. We all think we understand it, or so much of it as pertains 
to the city of our nativity and our own day. A Bostonian is familiar with 
the unfinished work of Allston, and the masterly portraits of Hunt and Rouse; 
a Connecticut connoisseur, with the historical pieces of Trumbull; a New Yorker, 
with the landscapes of Church and Gifford and INIcEntee; and a Philadelphian 
with the historical works of Rothermel, and the marines of Richards and Hamilton. 
But ask each of these supposiddous art authorities what he knows about the local 
art of the other, its origin, prospects, and present status; nay, ask each what 
he knows about his own home-art, especially its origin, and unless his studies 
have led him to investigate it, he has but litde to say. When and where did 
art begin in America? Who were our first painters? What branch did they 
cultivate,— portraiture, landscape, histor)-, allegory, — and what did they amount 
to? Among the earliest whose names occur to us are West and Stuart. 
West is litde more than a name to us, the greater part of his long life 
having passed in England. Stuart we know better, and chiefly by his portrait 
of Washington, which cannot have escaped us in some form or another. Sully 
we know, because he lived into our own time. We shall not take it upon us 
to say that art is better appreciated in Philadelphia than in — say Peoria; but 
we do say that Philadelphia has a right to be proud of her record in art. 
We have honored it by the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, as we 
have honored learning by the University of Pennsylvania, and charity by 
the Pennsylvania Hospital. These last were naturally an early growth of our 
civilizadon, sproudng in the old colonial days when the necessities of life 
demanded attention; but these once founded and in operation, our ancestors 
turned their thoughts to the elegancies and luxuries of life. The taste for 
art existed before the Revolution, but it was kept in the background by 
political events which cast their shadows ominously before them, and after the 
Revoludon it was passive until the smoke of all its batde-fields had cleared 
away, and the pursuits of peace had returned. That it was active and strong 
in the first year of the present century is certain, for in the summer of 1805 



234 A CENTURY AFTER. 

a meeting of the lovers of art was held at the State House in Philadelphia, 
and at another meeting, on the 26th of December, the original rules by which 
the Academy of Fine Arts is governed were adopted. Its charter was granted 
on May 28th, 1806. The projectors and founders of this institution were seventy 
in number, and it Is an honor to the legal profession to state that forty-one of 
these gendemen were lawyers. When the corner-stone of the present Academy 
was laid, in December, 1872, the last of the founders survived, in the person 
of the venerable Horace Binney, who was unable to attend the ceremony, being 
nearly ninety-three years old. It was largely through Mr. Binney's influence 
that the Academy of Fine Arts was founded. A fellow-worker with him, and 
an important one, was Joseph Hopkinson, a lawyer and a Philadelphian, whose 
memory lives, with that of his father, in our early annals. He was a boy of 
eight or thereabouts, one day in January, when the British men-of-war lying 
in the Delaware were frighted from their propriety by the appearance, in the 
morning, of sundry kegs, which came floating down the river from Bordentown. 
The word spread that they were torpedoes, and they were fired at till the 
sun set. There was a rebel in each; some went so far as to say that their 
bayonets projected from the bungholes! The absurdity of the affair tickled the 
fancy of Francis Hopkinson, the father of Joseph, who wrote a facetious ballad 
about it, which soon became popular with the army of Washington. Poetry 
was catching in the family, for twenty years later, when he was a rising lawyer, 
Joseph Hopkinson was waited upon, one Saturday afternoon, by an actor of 
his acquaintance, who was to have a benefit on the following Monday night, 
and who felt blue at the prospect of a bad house. If he could get a patriotic 
song, written to the tune of the "President's March," he did not doubt of a 
full house. The poets of the theatre had failed to write one; would his good 
friend Hopkinson try his hand? He did so, and gave him the song the next 
afternoon. It was "Hail, Columbia." Other founders of the Academy of Fine 
Arts worthy of honorable mention were Joseph R. Ingersoll and Henry D. Gilpin, 
lawyers both, and patrons of art. The latter bequeathed to the Academy, at his 
death, his collection of pictures, which was estimated at one hundred thousand 
dollars, and which, as the "Gilpin Gallery," perpetuated his name. Mr. Gilpin 
was the sixth president of the Academy, the first being George Clymer, one 
of "the Signers," and the second Judge Hopkinson, who filled the chair for 
nearly thirty years. The growth of the Academy of Fine Arts was slow, as 
the growth of such institutions must be in a country where the Government 
does nothing for them. Founded and maintained by the public spirit of our 



ARTS AND SCIENCES. 235 

citizens, it held its exhibitions, for many years, in a modern building of the Ionic 
order, which was begun in 1806, and stood on the site of the present American 
Theatre, on Chestnut street. The first exhibition was held in 181 1, and it speaks 
well for early American art that more than five hundred specimens of paintino- 
and statuar)' were then displaj'ed. The Academy was reconstructed after the 
fire of June, 1845, ^""^ twenty-three years afterward steps were taken to rear a 
building which should be more worthy of its standing and its treasures. 

The Academy of Fine Arts will bear comparison with any institution of the 
kind in America. It has a front of one hundred feet on Broad street, and a 
depth of two hundred and fifty-eight feet on Cherry street. Its situation, with 
a street on each of three sides, and an open space along a considerable pordon 
of the fourth, is very advantageous as regards lighting, and freedom from risk by 
fire. It is built of brick, the principal entrance, which is two stories high, being 
ornamented with encaustic tiles, terra-cotta statuary, and light stone dressings. 
The walls are laid in patterns of red and white brick. Over the main entrance 
on Broad street there is a large Gothic window with stone tracery; the Cherry 
street front is relieved by a colonnade supporting arched windows, back of which 
is the transept and pointed gable. Beyond the entrance vestibule, through which 
we will suppose we have passed, the main staircase, which starts from a wide 
hall, leads to the galleries on the second floor. Along the Cherry street side 
of the Academy are five galleries arranged for casts from the andque; and 
further on are rooms for drapery painting, and the life class. These have a 
clear north light which can never be obstructed. On the south side there is a 
large lecture-room, with retiring-rooms, and back of these are the modeling-rooms, 
and rooms devoted to the use of students and professors. We have ascended to 
the second story, and are in the main hall, which e.xtends across the building, and 
is intended for the exhibition of large works of art. This story is divided into 
galleries, which are lighted from the top. Through the centre runs a hall which 
is set apart for the exhibition of statuary, busts, small statues, bass-reliefs, etc. 
Each side of this hall are the picture-galleries, which are so arranged in size 
and form as to admit of classification of pictures, and which can be divided 
into suits where separate exhibitions may be held at the same time. The art 
collections of the Academy are considered the most valuable in America. They 
comprise the masterpieces of Stuart, Sully, Allston, West, and other of our early 
artists, the Gilpin gallery, already mentioned, fine marbles, and fac similes of 
famous statues, and a magnificent gallery of casts from the antique. On the 
whole, we are proud of our beautiful Academy and its treasures. 



A CENTURY AFTER. 




ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS. 



Sixty or seventy years ago the population of Philadelphia, including the 
county was less than one hundred thousand. It was the principal city of the 
country, but it contained few places of amusement. The Chestnut Street Theatre 
was closed during the summer and was opened only three evenings in the week 
in the winter. The Philadelphia Museum, founded by C. W. Peale, in 1784, was 
removed to the State House in 1802. Here, and in the public gardens and 
taverns, and in the scattered oyster-cellars, our young men amused themselves. If 
one of them had manifested an inclination to study the natural sciences, it would 
have puzzled him to do so. There was no naturalist of distinction in America, 
though there were several botanists in Pennsylvania, as the Bartrams and Bartons, 
and Wilson had begun the publication of his "American Ornithology." There 
were two or three small collections of minerals in the cit)^ but no work on 



ARTS AND SCIENCES. 237 

mineralogy for sale. The Museum was frequented, but chiefly on account of 
its monstrosities. A chicken with three legs or a calf with two heads was run 
after, and perpetual motion was voted superior to the mastodon. About this time, 
a young Friend, from Bucks county, John Speakman, kept an apothecary's shop 
at the corner of Market and Second streets. He had a thirst for knowledge, 
and he sought information from his friends and the customers of his shop, 
which gradually became a centre of scientific and literary gossip. Among his 
acquaintances was Jacob Gilliams, a leading dentist, who was in the habit of 
visiting William Bartram, with whom the ornithologist, Wilson, was very intimate. 
These visits inspired a love of nature in him, which he imparted to his friends, 
especially to Speakman, who suggested that if they and their companions could 
meet each other at stated times, and communicate what they might learn about 
the phenomena of nature, they would receive more pleasure and profit than from 
irregular and desultory conversations. Before they parted, such a meeting was 
agreed to, and was held at the house of Speakman on the evening of January 
25th, 181 2. From this meeting, which was attended by six gentlemen, came the 
Academy of Natural Sciences. How slow the growth was. Dr. Ruschenberger, 
who may be said to be its historian, has told us. It was decided at the start 
that, while no one was to be questioned concerning his religion or politics, 
religion and politics should never be alluded to at any meeting. The company 
organized, appointed Speakman treasurer, and adjourned to report progress. 
They met several times as before, and not wishing to abuse the hospitality 
of their host, concluded to assemble at a public house, which was known as 
"Mercer's cake shop," and is thought to have been the first place where ice 
cream was sold in Philadelphia. Fearing, however, that visitors to such houses 
might be expected to become customers, and that they might subside into a 
club of good-livers, they sought accommodations elsewhere. The present title of 
the institution was employed for the first time in the minutes for March 21st. 
So far, there were six members, and they had little to encourage them. "We 
cannot dissemble to ourselves," they wrote, "that unless we take on ourselves, 
among our very small number, a responsibility as to character and expenses, 
that may and must be considerable, and unless we make very extraordinar}', 
zealous, determined, and persevering exertions, the institution must die in the 
nutshell, before it can germinate and take root: in fine, that unless we be 
faithful and honorable to each other, and zealous for the interests of science, 
liberally devote much time, much industry-, mucli labor, much attention, and any 
sum of money that may be requisite, such an establishment as the one we 



238 A CENTURY AFTER. 

desire may never take place, or not for ages, in this community, — a society 
of generous, good-willing emulation for the acquirement, increase, simplification, 
and diffusion of natural knowledge." These were brave words, and they were 
lived up to. From Mercer's cake shop, the Society removed to a small room on 
the second lloor of a house on the east side of North Second street, near Race, 
over a milliner's shop. There were now seven members, Thomas Say having 
been elected. He was appointed conservator; Speakman, treasurer; Gilliams, 
comptroller; Dr. Gerard Troost, president, and Dr. Camillus Mann, secretary. 
Each gave what he could: Dr. Mann and Speakman books, Parmentier, one 
of the vice-presidents, a herbarium, collected about Paris, and Dr. Troost some 
artificial crystals prepared by himself This was in April. Four months later 
Speakman purchased a collection of minerals for the museum, advancing the 
cost from his own private means. The rapid increase of their collections and 
the smallness of the room in which they were kept compelled the Society to 
seek larger apartments, which they found on the west side of North Second 
street, in the upper floor of a three-story house, over an iron store. At the close 
of the year the Academy of Natural Sciences consisted of fourteen members and 
thirty-two correspondents. Ten members were elected in 18 13 and twenty-five in 
1 814, the correspondents elected during those years being twenty-four. Larger 
apartments were demanded in the latter year, and Gilliams proposed to build 
a hall on a lot at the rear of his father's house. His offer was accepted, and 
in the summer of the next year the cabinet and library of the museum were 
removed to the new hall, in Gilliams' court. The times were not propitious 
for the natural sciences, for the country was at war with England, and the 
importation of scientific books was nearly impossible. Philadelphia was considered 
in danger, and some of our young scientists were doing duty in camp. 

The history of the Academy of Natural Sciences is a history of unwearied 
devotion on the part of its officers. Its presidents were men of mark, notably so 
Dr. Troost, who was a mineralogist and chemist. Its second president, William 
Maclure, was the pioneer of American geology. It was largely through his 
munificence that the Academy was indebted for what prosperity it had in its 
early years. His donations to the museum and library were numerous, and he 
gave, at different times, upwards of twenty-five thousand dollars to the building 
fund. The reputation of Dr. Morton, its fourth president, was world-wide. The 
Society was incorporated March 24th, 181 7. The publication of its transactions 
was discussed, and the result was the first number of a journal which appeared 
in May. Before the close of the year it was found that the demand did not 



ARTS AND SCIENCES. 




ACADEiMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES. 



cover the expense of printing. Mr. Maclure supplied types and a printing-press, 
and a young compositor and pressman went to work on it, in his house. It 
was discontinued the next year, but revived in 1821 by Dr. Isaac Hays, who 
conducted it without loss. The publication of the journal introduced the Society 
to the notice of other learned societies, and the system of exchange once 
begun has continued to the present day, when about two hundred periodicals 
are received from Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. In the sixth year of 
its existence the Academy appointed standing committees on zoology, botany, 
mineralogy, and geology. It numbered now about one hundred members and 
one hundred and ninety correspondents. It was growing so rapidly that a 
committee was appointed to consider the means of better accommodations. A 
lot and building were purchased, in January, 1826, at the corner of Twelfth and 
Sansom streets, and in May the Society moved into this building, which had been 
used by the New Jerusalem Church. Here the collections increased so steadily 
that in 1839 a lot was purchased at the corner of Broad and Sansom, and a hall 
erected. This hall, which was finished in Februar}-, 1840, was enlarged some 
years afterward, at the expense of Dr. T. B. Wilson, to display a magnificent 
collection of ornithology^ which had been purchased by him, and which he 
presented to the Academy. It is interesting to trace the growth of the different 



240 



A CENTURY AFTER. 



collections. There is scarcely a spot on the habitable globe which is not 
represented through its natural history. In 1837 there were about one thousand 
specimens of birds, two hundred and fifty of which were from Surinam, and 
two hundred from India. The collection of Dr. Wilson, which was made by 
the Prince of Essling, contained twelve thousand specimens. This was followed 
by about two thousand Australian birds, and about a thousand parrots and 
conirostral birds. The ornithological collection was estimated at thirty-one 
thousand specimens sixteen years ago. The collection of fishes was estimated 
at that time at eleven hundred and seventy specimens, of three hundred and 
seventy-nine genera. The collection of shells was estimated at twenty-five 
thousand specimens of about nine thousand species. Entomology, Crustacea, 
and zoophiles are largely represented. The collection of botany numbers about 
fifty thousand specimens. The collection of ethnology, in which Dr. Morton was 
deeply interested, is one of the best in the world. The library contains over 
twenty-two thousand volumes, in every department of natural science, reports of 
geographical and geological expeditions, voyages, travels, and scientific publications 
in the different European languages. 

The want of space caused by the increase of all the collections led the 
Society to purchase, in 1868, the site of the new Academy of Natural Sciences, 
at the south-west corner of Nineteenth and Race streets. Upon this lot, which 
has a front on Nineteenth street of two hundred and eighty-eight feet, and a 
depth on Race street of one hundred and ninety-eight feet, the north wing was 
commenced, in July, 1872. The work has progressed as fast as the funds would 
allow. The subscriptions to the building fund, since 1865, amount to over two 
hundred thousand dollars. The construction of the north wing, and the cost of 
its cabinets, will probably reach that sum. The estimated cost of the rest of the 
building is half a million of dollars. 




THE SCHUYLKILL. 




J., .r,-..., i,y_ 



TOM mooke's cottage. 



SEVENTY-TWO years ago there came to this country a young Irishman 
of twenty-five. He was a poet; that is to say, he had translated Anacreon 
in fluent verse, and had pubhshed a volume of amatory poetrj^ of which he was 
soon heartily ashamed. He traveled about here a litde, this ingenuous Mr. Litrie, 
stopped at Norfolk, where he wrote a lovely ballad about the Dismal Swamp; 
went to Washington, where he wrote a heroic episde to a viscount; strayed to 
the Falls of the Mohawk, which he depicted in rhyme, and then to Buffalo, 
where he wrote another heroic epistle. In the course of his rambles this 
epistolary Celtic person visited Philadelphia, and occupied a cottage on the 
west bank of the Schuylkill, in the neighborhood of the Belmont Water-works. 
This cottage still remains, and an old tree, under which he may have sat, and 
celebrations used to be given there in his honor. He had honored our city by 
living in it, and leaving it. Have you read of late years his "Lines written on 



242 A CENTURY AFTER. 

leaving Philadelphia"? Shall we listen to the pipings of this pretty little Pan as 
he wanders alone by the Schuylkill and gazes on its flowery banks with a sigh? 
He tells us that he did not remain long unblessed by the smile he languished 
for, though he scarcely hoped it would soothe him until the threshold of home 
was pressed by his feet. He tells us that the lays of his boyhood had stolen 
to the ears of our fair ones, who flattered him by saying they found in his 
heart something better than fame. Nor did woman deny her enamoring magic — 
whatever that was: Jier eye was like eyes he had loved, and, like those happy 
luminaries, had softened and wept at his song. Hear his last sigh, his siispira 
de profundis: 

"The stranger is gone — but he will not forget, 

When at home he shall talk of the toils he has known, 
To tell, with a sigh, what endearments he met, 

As he strayed by the wave of the Schuylkill alone." 

Shall we allow this endearing young lover to depart, or shall we detain him 
a moment on the flowery banks of the Schuylkill? It is the Centennial Year, and 
we are all good-natured, so we will detain him. He has told us what he thought 
of our women; he shall tell us now what he thinks of us. "The rude familiarity 
of the lower orders, and indeed the unpolished state of society in general, 
would neither surprise nor disgust if they seemed to flow from that simplicity ot 
character, that honest ignorance of the gloss of refinement which may be looked 
for in a new and inexperienced people. But, when we find them arrived at 
maturity in most of the vices, and all the pride of civilization, while they are still 
so remote from its higher and better characteristics, it is impossible not to 
feel that this youthful decay, this crude anticipation of the natural period of 
corruption, represses every sanguine hope of the future energy and greatness 
of America." Poets should never prophesy. The poet and the Vates are no 
longer one. Your little gifts sleep in unread volumes of verse and prose; 
your memory lies buried in the unreadable tomes of your noble friend Lord 
John Russell. We have somehow survived here along the Schuylkill, and are 
making preparations for the Centennial. We forgive you, Thomas Moore. 

How did we come here by the Schuylkill? We rambled up Nineteenth 
street, from the Academy of Natural Sciences, and, reaching Callowhill street, 
struck westwardly seven or eight squares, until we found ourselves at the 
Fairmount Bridge. It is erected on the site of the Wire Bridge, which succeeded 
an old wooden structure destroyed by fire a number of years ago, at the foot 



THE SCHUYLKILL. 




CALLOWHILL STREET (FAIRMOUNT) BRIDGE. 



of Callowhill street, known in olden time as Harding's Ferr)'. This bridge, 
which was finished in the summer of 1875, is one of tlie finest we have. It 
has two decks. The lower one opens on Callowhill street, and the upper one, 
which rises to a considerable height, at its eastern approach winds around the 
Fairmount Basin, with an easy declination, into Spring Garden street. Its western 
end passes over the Pennsylvania Railroad, on a level with the high ground of 
Mantua Village, now known as the Twenty-fourth Ward, and leads into what 
was formerly Bridge, but is now Sjjring Garden, street. The river is spanned 
by a single iron truss, three hundred feet in length, the eastern and western 
approaches being built of iron and stone. The outlook from the upper deck, 
which is a favorite promenade, is grand. We have gained it, and standing here, 
with the Water-works at our feet, we look up to the north. We see the dam 
just above us, the litde steamboat starting out from its landing, the pretty 
boat-houses, the Zoological Garden on the opposite bank, and the river winding 
away, lost among the hills of the Park. Turning our eyes to the south, we look 
over the city, — over its countless squares of buildings, and their profusion ot 
domes, towers, and spires. A noble view at all times, it is a striking one at 
night, for then we look down on the immense yard of the Pennsylvania Railroad, 
which is fairly ablaze with the dazzling lights of its locomotives. Colored lanterns 
flit hither and thither, along and across the tracks, lifted, waving, lowered, — like 
erratic Will-o'-the-wisps. We hear the puffing and screaming of engines, and 
the rush and roar and rattle of passing trains. It is beautiful and terrible, — a 



244 A CENTURY AFTER. 

sight to be remembered. The bard of the Schuylkill never dreamed of anything- 
so magnificent when he paced its flowery banks. 

There was nothing about the Schuylkill in the winter of 1872 that could 
remind one of flowers. From the dam beyond the limits of the Park the river 
was a great ice-gorge. That ice-gorges might be expected elsewhere in the 
State, at other cities and towns along the running streams, say at the Delaware 
Water Gap, seemed natural; but that the Schuylkill here should be a met- de 
glace was incredible. It was true, nevertheless. Above the Skating-club house 
the stream was choked with blocks of ice that had been tossed about in 
inextricable confusion by the action of the flood, great masses being thrown 
up on the drive. Above Girard Avenue Bridge it was more densely packed. 
Above Columbia Bridge it was at its worst, for the masses there — blocks, crags, 
peaks — were piled high in the air, the drive thereabout being buried under these 
boreal fragments which had tumbled up among the trees with the wrecks of 
rustic bridges. It was a wild, grim, rugged scene, and thousands went every 
day to see it The river for once seemed to have forgotten itself, and the 
memory of its smooth, transparent floor, upon which whole armies of skaters had 
disported themselves year after year. Philadelphians have always been proud of 
their skating: perhaps they have boasted a little about it. Old Graydon thought 
otherwise, however; for he maintained, in his memoirs, that his countrymen were 
the most graceful and expert skaters in the world. That cheery old gossip, 
Watson, (our local Pepys,) had a high opinion of his compatriots. He mentions 
the names of some who were superior to the rest in his day, not forgetting a 
stalwart colored man who outspeeded the wind, and, while darting forward on 
his low-gutter skates, uttered a wild scream, which, he says, is peculiar to the 
African race while in active exertion. Besides this dark winter loon, he mentions 
a winter robin, in the person of George Heyl, who wore a red coat and buckskin 
tights, and was incomparable at figures and High Dutch. Watson's generation 
of skaters is gone, but their descendants flourish among us. Prominent among 
them was the late Colonel James Page, whose graceful movements were the 
admiration of two generations of his fellow-citizens. They incorporated the 
Philadelphia Skating Club in 1S61, and added to its natural object, which was 
improvement in the art of skating, the higher object of rescuing those who 
are in danger by breaking through the ice. A humane society, they have a 
variety of apparatus for saving life, — cords and reels, ladders, hooks, axes, 
life-floats, station and caution flags, life-lines, boats, blankets, grapnels, and 
drags. The records of the society show that they have saved over two hundred 



THE SCHUYLKILL. 







and fifty lives since their organization. 
Their club-house, which is built of fine 
gray stone, and is two stories high, 
has a front of fort)^ feet and a depth 
of sixty feet. It is of Italian archi- 
tecture, with a cupola and tall flag-staff 
The roof is covered with slate-work, 
and encircled with a railing. The lower -story is devoted to the boats and 
life-saving apparatus. The second story is divided into the necessary club-rooms, 
among which is one for the board of surgeons, another being a reception-room. 
The latter fronts on the river, and is popular with the ladies. The Delaware 
was the favorite skating-ground of the old worthies of whom Watson has told 
us, but since navigation has forced us to keep it open in winter by means of 
our ice-boats, our skaters have betaken themselves to the Schuylkill. They may 
be seen there in thousands, after the unseen artificers of nature have stretched 
their winter bridge across its waters, disporting like children. Hither, thither, 



246 A CENTURY AFTER. 

up, down, they glide and dart about, striking out in eccentric curves and 
convolutions, rushing and sheering past each other, eager, daring, wary, — 
madcaps all. The sun is bright, the air inspiriting: their cheeks glow, the 
blood dances in their veins. Why should they not be merry? 

When the ice begins to melt and skates are hung up, our oarsmen appear 
on the river in their shells, and make the ash bend in their efforts to keep their 
blood warm in the cold March winds. If we go back, in thought, to the first 
boatmen of the Schuylkill, we find ourselves in a wilderness watching the Indians 
in their light, birchen canoes. Later, we might find, perhaps, the stately barge 
of the Founder. That he delighted in boats and boating is evident in one of 
his letters to Logan: — "But above all dead things my barge. I hope nobody 
uses it on any account, and that she is kept in a dry dock or, at least, covered 
from the weather." Later, we find the bateaux of Fort St. David and the 
squadron of "the colony in Schuylkill," which is composed of the "Shirk" and 
the "Fly." Later yet, but still in the colonial period, we find their successors, 
the "Manayunk" and the "Washington," which were admitted Into the squadron 
in 1762. They were built of mulberry timber, with ash oars, and are said to 
have remained within the limits of the Park for sixty years. After these, and 
in our own time, we see sundry pioneer clubs, the first of which, the "Blue 
Devil," was organized in 1833. This cerulean demon took part, two years 
afterwards, in the first regatta of which a record is kept. It was contested by 
four four-oared barges and seven eight-oared barges, of which she was one. 
The present Schuylkill Navy was organized in 1858, and its first regatta was 
held the next year. It then consisted of eleven clubs and twenty boats; it 
now consists of ten clubs and sixty-eight boats. The clubs of which it is 
composed were organized in the. following years: — Bachelors', 1853; University, 
1854; Undine, 1856; Quaker City, 1858; Pacific, 1859; Malta, i860; Pennsylvania, 
1861; Philadelphia, 1862; Vesper, 1865; and Crescent, 1867. The total number 
of members belonging to these clubs, including honorary and contributing 
members, is four hundred and sixty-eight. The Undine Barge Club has the 
largest number of boats, which is twelve, and the Pacific and the University 
the smallest, which is three. The last-named club was organized by classmen 
of the University of Pennsylvania. A frequenter of the Park soon learns the 
clubs to which our oarsmen belong. He knows the Bachelors' boys, because 
their blue flannel shirts are trimmed with white braid and have gilt buttons on 
their fronts and cuffs. He knows the Quaker City's boys by the trefoil on the 
corners of their shirt-collars; the Philadelphia's boys by their double-breasted 



THE SCHUYLKILL. 




SKATING ON THE SCHUYLKILL. 



shirts, and the University's boys by their red-and-black-striped shirts. The 
Philadelphia's boys wear blue flannel skull-caps; the Pacifies and Pennsylvanians 
wear leather caps. He also knows, if he can distinguish the little silken flags 
at their bows, to what club the boats belong. The blue-and-white stripes denote 
the University Club; the blue trefoil on a white ground denotes the Quaker 
City; the white star on a red ground the Pennsylvania; the white star on a 
blue ground the Vesper; the Maltese cross on a purple ground the Malta; the 
yellow crescent on a white ground the Crescent, and so on. He knows, further, 
the pennants of the commodore and vice-commodore, and the pennants of the 
first, second, and third class champions. He learns, perhaps, that the Quaker 
City Club has held the first champion flag for three successive years. If he 
has leisure, this summer saunterer, he lingers around the boat-houses on the 
east bank, at the foot of Lemon Hill. The first one, which is built of stone, 
with a balcony at each end, is occupied by the Pacific and Quaker City; the 
second, which is two stories high and has a Mansard roof, is occupied by the 
Crescent and the Pennsylvania; the third, which is of brown stone, with a 
balcony at the front and rear, is occupied by the Bachelors; the fourth, which 
is of West Chester green stone, with bay windows on the Park, a balcony over 
these landward and another balcony looking on the water, is occupied by the 
University and the Philadelphia; the Vesper and the Malta occupy the fifth; 
the sixth, recently completed, is of light green stone, owned and occupied by 
the College Club; while the Undine has a share of the seventh, which is the 
Skatinor-club House. 

If we were to arrange a calendar for the meridian of Philadelphia, we 
would omit some one of the meteorological remarks that are supposed to be 
pertinent to March, such as "look out for squalls," and substitute in its place 
the pleasanter item, "look out for shells in the river." When the first spring 



248 A CENTURY AFTER. 

days come there are signs of activity in and about the boat-houses. Boats 
are brought out and carefully examined and overhauled, and rowing-suits are 
scrutinized to see what harm the moths have done. Flags are flying from the 
staffs, and scores of curious outlookers gather along the river bank. Races are 
made for the season. The boats are out morning and evening, and the training 
begins. Single shells and double shells, four oars and six oars, they are all at 
work. The Schuylkill is one of the best river-courses in Am.erica. There is no 
tide in it and scarcely a perceptible ripple. The water is of good depth and 
sufficiently wide to accommodate six or eight boats abreast. The measurements 
are accurately ascertained. The distance from Turtle Rock to Girard Avenue 
Bridge, for example, is two thousand and sixty feet; to the middle of Peters' 
Island, a mile and a half; to the Laurel Hill landing, two miles and two thousand 
three hundred feet, and to the Falls Bridge, where the stake-boat is sometimes 
placed, two miles and four thousand six hundred feet. The record of distances 
traversed by the Schuylkill Navy, if carefully kept, would present some astonishing 
fiCTures. A record of the Undine Club shows that its boats are out from five 
hundred to seven hundred times yearly. A record of one of its members for 
eight years and five months shows a distance of eleven thousand four hundred 
and eighty-one miles pulled over. The greatest number of miles rowed by a 
member in one year is two thousand six hundred and forty-three. The best 
time yet made was in 1869, when the "Hiawatha," of the Malta Club, flashed 
through the water and did her three miles in eig'hteen minutes and two seconds. 
One would think that what with their daily exercise and their regattas the 
amateur oarsmen of the Schuylkill might be content, but such is not the case. 
It was an observation of the late lamented Samuel Patch (who had much better 
have been a rower than a diver) that some things can be done as well as 
others. Our rowers have shown the truth of this great axiom by occasionally 
doing a little boating outside of the Schuylkill. The Bachelors' Club, when a 
bantling of six, made an excursion on the Delaware and Delaware and Raritan 
Canal to New York. The Malta Club, when only a year old, went down the 
Susquehanna to Havre de Grace, and a double-scull outrigger, belonging to 
the Undine Club, went to New York by the same route as the Bachelors' boat. 
We have witnessed regattas before now on the Schuylkill, when the shores and 
waters were lined with spectators, and the shells were pulling up the river, 
under the bridge, past Peters' Island, — four, five, six abreast, — shooting ahead and 
falling behind; cedar shells, white, green, orange, crimson, blue shells, each with 
its tinv flag at the bows; but we have never witnessed what will be seen here 



THE SCHUYLKILL. 



249 



next summer. Our Centennial Regatta Commission are making preparations for 
magnificent regattas on the Schuylkill, and their action is heartily seconded by 
all the boating-clubs in the country. We shall see our best amateur oarsmen 
and, without doubt, the best professional crews of England and Ireland. 

The magic tapestry of Prince Hussein, in the "Arabian Nights," was, no 
doubt, expeditious in transporting him whithersoever he wished, but it was not 
so expeditious as the wings which have borne us, without wishing, across the 




BOATING OX THE SCHUYLKILL. 



river and placed us on Mount Prospect. We have here the finest view of 
the upper part of the city and its surroundings that can be obtained in the 
Park. Below, at the foot of our mountain throne of Chamouni, stretches the 
Schuylkill, placid, winding, bright, here a lake, there a river, and everywhere 
a mirror of the changeful sky. Opposite is Laurel Hill, — City of the Dead, — 
with innumerable monuments thickly clustered together on its sides and summit, 
beautiful, solemn, a forest of marble planted by love and sorrow over the ashes 
of their lost ones. Looking up from where we stand, through an opening 
in the encircling foliage, we have a glimpse of the Reading Railroad Bridge 
and Manayunk. The best view of the bridge is from the east bank, under 
the willows at the foot of Laurel Hill. We behold largely there what we 



2SO 



A CENTURY AFTER. 



see here in miniature, the graceful structure spanning the river with its gray 
stone arches and piers, over which long trains are speeding cityward to 
the great coal-wharves at Port Richmond. Nature freshens and strengthens 
herself as she recedes from the city, and here, at Chamouni, the outlook is 
grand. For, besides what we noticed in our hurried glance up and down 
the river, we have around us glens, woodlands, and rocks, and farm-lands and 
villages in the distance. If Mount Prospect has a history it has escaped us, 
and if there are traditions attached to its old mansion we have not heard them. 
It is said to have been built in 1802, by George Plumstead, a merchant of 
Philadelphia, who, we trust, enjoyed himself in its pleasant chambers, now set 
apart for the dispensing of creature comforts to ramblers like ourselves, to the 
diminishment of our shekels. Be sure, he enjoyed his great trees, three of 
which are still standing. We have seen great trees in the East Park, at 
Rockland, in the Ravine, and by the Strawberry Mansion, but none like these. 
They are larger and more impressive, these patriarchal old giants, than all 
others in Fairmount, and they represent three different races of forestry, 
one being a black walnut, another a chestnut, and the third a tulip poplar. 
Wordsworth might have painted them if he could have seen them in his 
poetic wanderings in the Lake country, but no lesser artist than he. They are 
simply magnificent. 

The wings which bore us hither are bearing us up the Schuylkill. We 
have passed above the Wissahickon, and have reached Manayunk, which lies 
on our right. It has grown to be what it is within the last fifty years, for 
as late as 1823 it was chiefly known for its shad-fishery. Then it had but 
one other industry, Mark Richards' Flat Rock cotton factory, but since the 
construction of the Schuylkill Canal, which concentrated here a large amount 
of water-power, mills have risen like exhalations, — cotton-mills, woolen-mills, 




BOAT-HOUSES. 



THE SCHUYLKILL. 251 

paper-mills, (an old industry hereabout,) and great mills for the manufacture of 
iron and steel. We have escaped from the buzzing of looms and the metallic 
ring of iron, and are in pleasant rural places, where many wealthy Philadelphians 
have built themselves country seats. We are occasionally reminded of the city by 
a rolling-mill and the smoke of a furnace. Now we have passed Conshohocken 
and are at Norristown, which is built on the site of Penn's old demesne at 
Norriton. There was a cry of hard times a hundred and seventy years ago 
as there is to-day, and the letters of James Logan, who was managing the 
affairs of the Penns, are full of complaints. He was greatly troubled in 
collecting rents, and in selling lands, the payments for which were deferred. 
What little money there was was in town, and wheat was worth verj' little. 
He writes on one occasion: — "Last night William Penn, Jr. sold his manor 
on Schuylkill to William Trent and Isaac Norris for eight hundred and fifty 
pounds. They were unwilling to touch it, for, without a great prospect, none 
will now meddle with land; but in his case he was resolved to sell and leave 
the country." The growth of Norristown was slow, the place being whollj- 
built since our first struggle with England, when, oddly enough, it was the 
farm of John Bull, whose farm-house, by the way, was extant in the time of 
Watson, and was known as Richardson's Inn. Norristown, like Manayunk, is 
largely engaged in the rolling of iron. It has a population of about eleven 
thousand, and is very neatly built, with a court-house of light gray marble. 
The soil is enriched with the valuable kinds of marble, as statuary and breccia. 
It is the capital of Montgomery county, which has still a German-speaking 
population in its northern part; and very queer German it is, too, as the 
readers of Mrs. Gibbons' entertaining volume on "Pennsylvania Dutch" are 
aware. Some seven miles out of town there is a religious community which 
takes its name from its European founder, Casper Schwenckfeldt, a nobleman 
of Silesia, who was born two ^-ears before the discovery of America, and who 
may be described as the earliest Quaker, in that he taught a religion of quietism 
and non-resistance about a hundred years before Fox was born. They have 
a portrait of their prophet there, — a dignified figure in a furred gown, with a 
patriarchal beard, — and they are reputed to live pious and humble lives. 

The liberal spirit of Penn and his followers made Pennsylvania from the 
beginning the asylum of hosts of religionists. In less than a year after his 
landing at the Blue Anchor Tavern, Pastorius had taken up his setdement at 
Germantown, and the next year he was followed by Kclpius and his Society 
of the Woman in the Wilderness. The air of Europe in the sixteenth and 



A CENTURY AFTER. 




LOOKING UP THE SCHUYLKILL FROM CHAMOUNI. 



seventeenth centuries was charged with rehgious electricity. The Reformers 
differed among themselves, and began persecuting each other. Luther, for 
example, did not agree with something that Schwenckfeldt had written, and 
they had a conference about it, which, of course, satisfied neither. He had not 
the same toleration for others that he demanded for himself so he had his 
opponent banished. He fled into Germany, where he exerted his name and 
talents in favor of the Anabaptists, but he soon separated from them, and 
founded a new sect, of which he was the head. He did not admit that the 



THE SCHUYLKILL. 253 

Scriptures were inspired: God would communicate their meaning to each 
individually. Every man, therefore, was the master of his own belief. The 
austerity of Schwenckfeldt's manners, and his air of conviction, attached most of 
the German spiritualists to him. He was written for and against. Melanchthon, 
gentle-hearted, but foul-mouthed, changed his name into Stinckfeldt. He could 
not live down his brethren militant, but he outlived them, — Luther by fifteen 
years and Melanchthon by a year. His disciples survived him in Silesia, where 
they still remain. A portion of them emigrated to Pennsylvania forty years after 
the death of Kelpius, and settled in Montgomery, Bucks, Berks, and Lehigh 
counties. They have led obscure lives, for the existence of the community at 
Norristown was, until lately, unknown. 

The wings which wafted us a moment to the theological Europe of the 
sixteenth century, have wafted us back to the eighteenth century and the 
Schuylkill. Washington is in the woods at Whitemarsh, and Howe threatens to 
attack him. He marches on the night of December 4th, fourteen thousand 
strong, and at. daybreak has drawn his lines beyond Chestnut Hill. He 
skirmishes with our army in front of him, but finds it too strong. His men lie 
on their arms that night, and the heights are lighted with their watch-fires. The 
next day he marches to Germantown, and a day later returns, and feels our 
lines, which are still too strong. He then abandons the idea of attacking us, 
and retires to Philadelphia, where he goes into winter quarters. It is necessary 
that we should do the same, and Washington and his generals discuss the 
matter over their maps. Some mention York and Reading, and others speak 
for Carlisle. 

" But Washington decided, 

When all had spoken round, 
That Valley Forge, in Chester, 
Should be our winter ground." 

One of our poets says this, and as he follows history closely, we may trust 
him here. He depicts the breaking up of the encampment at Whitemarsh. It 
is snowing, and our army are climbing over the whitened hills. They cross a 
wasted country, with here and there a farm-house. No smoke-wreaths are 
curling up from the chimneys ; no face looks out of the doors and windows. 
They halt at night in the shelter of the pine woods, and light fires. At 
daybreak they are off again in the blinding snow. Finally they cross the 
swollen Schuylkill, and reach \'alley Forge, (where we are now,) on December 
19th, 1777. They halt along the river, and cook their dinners; some sit apart. 



THE SCHUYLKILL. 



255 



and rub the rust-stains on their muskets ; the teamsters comb the sleet from the 
manes of their horses. They are twenty-one miles from Philadelphia, — a day's 
march from the army of Howe. Valley Forge admits of defense against 
artillery, and has more than one convenient route of escape into the interior. 
They have no shelter, and can have none until they build themselves huts. 
They plan a village on the hills, with its streets running east and west, and its 
construction is the work of their Christmas holidays. They build long rows of 
log huts, and make pikes and stockades along the line of trenches. They cut 
off the entire forest in building these rough houses and for fuel, but they 
cannot keep warm. They have no clothes to wear, no blankets to lie on, no 
tents to sleep under. The sentinels stand with their feet in their hats or 
caps; anything not to freeze! Three thousand are unfit for duty; they are 
barefooted, and otherwise ragged. They can not be properly cared for in the 
crowded hospitals. They die for want of straw to lie upon — chilled to death on 
the cold, wet ground. The well ones (as if any could be well here !) sit all 
night by their fires of brushwood. They act as horses, dragging carts without a 
murmur. A whole brigade goes for days without meat. Things will mend, no 
doubt. Congress has promised them a month's extra jsay, and given them 
permission to take what is necessary for their subsistence. Congress has also 
sent them Baron Steuben, who has come over to America as a volunteer, 
and w'ho will drill them, and make them soldiers. They have faith in their 
commander, and they respect his stately wife, who shares his winter campaign. 
We see this noble gentleman and lady sitting at table, she at the head, with 
the officers whom he has invited to dine with him. Their fare is a scanty piece 
of meat, with hard bread, and a few potatoes. They drink the prosperit)' of the 
nation (which is sorely in need of it) in simple toddy, and have for dessert a 
plate of chestnuts. Can they hope to prevail against his Excellency General 
Howe, and his tall grenadiers, — this soldier, whom his subordinates are caballing 
against, and these poor men \\\\o are perishing of cold and hunger at Valley 
Forge? Ay, marry, they can and will. They will live through the winter and 
spring, and one day in June they will cross the Delaware in pursuit of tlie 
British. 

During the Revolution, — of which we have recalled the darkest episode 
here at Valley Forge, — a little boy was tenderly cared for on a plantation in 
Louisiana. His father had been an admiral in the French navy, and was a man 
of culture and refinement. When his little Jean Jacques manifested his tastes, 
which was at an early period, he encouraged them. His first and last taste was 



=56 



A CENTURY AFTER. 



for natural history, as embodied in the most beautiful and ethereal of all the 
citizens of its wonderful kingdom — birds. He was never tired of watching and 
studying them. He had his litde feathered pets, and when they died he wept 
and would not be comforted. The love of birds naturally begot the desire to 
draw them, and the desire to draw the desire to paint. His father determined 
that he should study art, and under a great master, so he was sent to Paris, 
where he was placed in the studio of David. He neglected the higher forms 




'^Z 



VALLEY FORGE. 



of art, we are told, and devoted himself to what he liked better — birds. "What 
had I to do," he asked, "with monstrous torsos and the heads of heathen gods, 
when my business lay among the birds?" He returned to America at the age 
of seventeen or thereabout, and took possession of a farm which his father 
had given him here. "It was refreshed," he wrote, "during the summer heats 
by the waters of the Schuylkill and traversed by a creek named Perkioming." 
It is just above Valley Forge, on what we now call Perkiomen creek. The 
valley through which it flows is remarkable for beautiful scenery, and in the 



THE SCHUYLKILL. 257 

days of our young naturalist it sheltered many rare birds. Settled in this 
nest, among his beloved birds, he did at last what the birds do — he found a 
mate. She appreciated his genius and sympathized with his pursuits, and he 
was happy. He lived here about ten years, perfecting himself in natural histor)'. 
Pennsylvania was not without its naturalists. Bartram, an old man, was skilled in 
botany, like his father before him, and Alexander Wilson, the Scotchman, who 
landed at New Castle, in his twenty-eighth year, and walked up to Philadelphia, 
shooting birds by the way, — Wilson, — weaver, poet, peddler, printer, pedagogue, — 
who was now in charge of a seminary at Gray's Ferry, was soon to make his 
name famous. He claimed to be the first American ornithologist: the greatest 
was the gentleman of French extraction, wdio was living about twenty -five miles 
above him on the Perkiomen creek, and whose tall, commanding figure he may 
have passed in the w^oods. There is a tradition that they met in the West 
afterwards, for our ornithologist removed to Kentucky. Westward through the 
wilderness to the Ohio. They settled near the town of Louisville, where he 
opened a store. It w^as there that Wilson and he met. Wilson had published 
four or five volumes of his "American Ornithology," and was trying to procure 
subscribers for that work. Our friend was debating whether he should take it, 
but his partner advised him not to, as his own drawings of birds were superior 
to Wilson's. Wilson was surprised, the story goes, to discover an ornithologist 
in the tall backwoodsman before him. The woodland life of our hero, which 
commenced in earnest in Pennsylvania, was pursued for years in the West and 
South, where, clad in a rough leathern dress, with a gun by his side, and a 
knapsack for his brushes and pencils, he wandered in their pathless solitudes, in 
the canebrakes of Kentucky and the pine barrens of Florida, floating about the 
still bayous, and drifting in a frail skiff down the rushing tide of the Mississippi. 
Years passed like days in the infinite secrecies of nature, and our adventurous 
friend found himself again on the banks of the Schuylkill. How two years later 
he departed for Europe, where he and his drawings made a profound sensation, 
and where he published his magnificent "Birds of America," commencing without 
a single subscriber and was rewarded royally; and how the great writers of 
England were proud to know him — Jeffrey, Wilson, Scott, and the great sciendsts 
of France — Cuvier, St. Hiliare, Humboldt; who knows not this, and the after-life 
of our great naturalist, John James Audubon? Hail to his honored shade! 

Our journey up the Schuylkill has brought us to Phcenixville, w^hich is 
situated at the mouth of French creek, the water oudet of a lovely, fertile 
valley. PhcEnixville is noted for its rolling-mills and furnaces, which are said to 



A CENTURY AFTER. 




READING. 



be the largest in the country. The population, numbering about seven thousand, 
is engaged in the manufacture of iron, which, as well as copper, is found within 
its limits. The honor of producing the iron of which the dome of the Capitol at 
Washington is made, belongs to Phoenixville. Pottstown need not dela}' us, though 
the scenery about is charming, and the houses, nestling in pleasant yards and 
amid shady trees, are cosy and comfortable looking. The roadway shops of the 
Reading Railroad Company are located here, and the railroad itself, which has 
followed us, passes through one of the streets, and crosses Manatawny creek 
over a lattice bridg^e one thousand feet in length. The o-eneral character of the 
river scenery is the same. We feel that we are getting farther from the great 
city and nearer to nature; nor does the bustle, the din of the manufacturing 
towns along its banks, disturb the impression. Phcenixville and Pottstown, when 
we are once past them, are altars whence smoke is curling to the primitive 



THE SCHUYLKILL. 259 

Powers, and the waters are their everlasting libation. Winding along tlirough 
grassy slopes and litde patches of woodland, mile after mile, until Mount 
Penn, Mount Gibraltar, and Neversink draw together, and we find ourselves 
approaching the city they shelter — Reading. 

Where Reading stands there stood in the old time an inn, which was kept 
by Conrad Weiser. He was an Indian agent, and it was his duty at stated 
times, as it is the duty of Indian agents now, to distribute presents among the 
aborigines, — not from the Great Father at Washington, for then neither were, 
but from Richard and Thomas Penn, the Proprietaries. At this inn, which 
remained until about forty years ago in the shape of a little store, the red men 
assembled; and there they received their presents, sang their war-songs, went 
through their war-dances, and smoked the pipe of peace. As we do not read 
that he was scalped, we will honor his memory by supposing that he was 
tolerably honest — for an Indian agent, and that his fire-water was considerately 
watered. There was abundant need of it, for once in a while his copper-colored 
wards went off on the war-path. The first house in Reading was built in 1748: 
in 1752 it contained one hundred and thirty dwellings. This growth, which was 
a rapid one for the time, was no doubt due to the agents of the Penns, who 
called for settlers in it, describing it as "a new town of great natural advantages 
of location, and destined to be a popular place." It was a very popular place 
when Washington and his single-hearted soldiers were wintering at \'alley 
Forge: for it was an asylum of refuge for numbers of imperilled and disaft'ected 
patriots, who cared more for their own precious comforts than for the sufferings 
of their countrymen down below. They were where they should have been. 
Everywhere there was a savor of royalty, — King street, Queen street, Prince 
street, Duke street. Earl street, — all the nobility and gentry figured conspicuously 
at the street corners and on the inn signs. (What, pray, was the sign in front 
of Weiser's inn?) These powerless names were in vogue in Reading fifty years 
after the close of the Revolution, when they were changed, "as more compatible 
with the republican simplicity of our present form of government." It would 
have been well if the reform had stopped here: for when it went to the length 
of changing the street called after the second wife of the Founder, whose 
memory we have preserved in our Callowhill street, it went too far. We 
Americans are a tolerably inventive people, but our invention does not show to 
advantage in the naming of places. There was a time when we ran upon our 
great men, military and civic, when every city had its Washington, Jefferson, 
Adams, Madison, Monroe, and Jackson streets. There was a later time when 



26o 



A CENTURY AFTER. 



old classic cities were in high favor, when hundreds of towns were Romes, 
Athens, Ithacas, Uticas, and so on. There came a time when antiquity and 
patriotism were alike exhausted in our nomenclature. Then we drew upon 
the French for Bellevues, Bellevilles, and Bellairs, for our villages, and upon 
Daboll for our streets. The largest portion of New York, for example, 
consists of numbered streets and avenues. A stranger can tell where he is 




POTTSVILLE. 



in an enumerated city like that sooner than elsewhere, say in Boston, where 
streets go winding about and across each other like the threads of a great 
spider web, the State-House and its Hub being the spider. But let us return 
to Reading, lest any further allusion to the arachnida should entangle us with 
our brethren of Massachusetts. (Perish the thought in this Centennial Year!) 
Reading is laid out on the chess-board pattern of Philadelphia. Its streets 
are well paved, and its houses and stores are in good taste, being at once 



THE SCHUYLKILL. 261 

substantial and handsome. It is the third city in the State in its manufactures, 
and the fourth in its population, which numbers about forty thousand. It has 
twenty-three churches, two opera-houses, and several banks and hotels. When 
it was first settled the world of mineral wealth which lies hereabout, and the 
under-world of black diamonds which lies in the carboniferous reorions above, 
were unknown. But when they were once known, — when our iron ores and our 
coal-veins were discovered and worked, — it grew as it by magic: both sought 
it on their destined missions to mankind — one shot through it on its way to the 
Delaware, the other lingered, and lingers until it is transformed. "Build my 
house in the shape of this," said the old settler, Daniel Boas, holding up a 
sledge-hammer to his builder. It was done, tradition says, and was a surprise 
to his neighbors. It was an instruction and an inheritance to posterity, for out 
of the sledoe-hammer house the wealth of Readincr has come. The value of its 
furnaces, foundries, rolling-mills, and railroad shops is over three millions of 
dollars. The annual value of their manufactures is over eighteen millions 
of dollars, and the number of men employed is over twelve hundred. The 
foundry, car and locomotive shops of the Reading Railroad Company are 
here, and their depot, which is said to be the finest in the State. There are 
many beautiful drives in the neighborhood, and charming rural spots to which 
excursion parties are made. Perhaps the. finest view of the city is from above 
the railroad bridge of the Lebanon Valley Branch of the Reading Railroad. It 
is a noble panorama, with the placid river fringed and shaded by trees, and 
the liofht arched bridge alono; which a train is dashing in the forcQ-round; 
and in the background the city, a cluster of buildings, out of which rise tall 
church-steeples and the smoke of furnace-chimneys, and beyond all the triple 
sheltering mountains. A lover of the picturesque may go farther and fare 
worse than at Readino-. 

The Reading Railroad, so far from ending, may almost be said to begin 
here, — it puts forth so many branches in various directions. We are not 
following the railroad but the river, but as the railroad follows the river it 
amounts to the same thing. The landscape, which has hitherto consisted 
of farm-lands, changes as we ascend into a mountainous region. We have 
reached Port Clinton, — situated at the junction of the Schuylkill and the Little 
Schuylkill,— a pleasant town, which has not yet seen its first half century. Past 
Auburn and Schuylkill Haven, on, on, until, in the gap by which the Schuylkill 
breaks through Sharp Mountain, we come to Pottsville. There was a flavor 
of comparative antiquity about Reading; but Pottsville, like Port Clinton, is 



A CENTURY AFTER. 




NEAR QUAKAKE JUNCTION. 



positively modern. In 1827, John Putt, a descendant of one Wilhelm Putt, a 
Hollander, who came to Pennsylvania in 1734, — ^John Putt, we say, built a 
furnace here, in digging the foundation of which a coal-vein was discovered. 
Greenwood Furnace was well enough in its way, but Putt and his family had 
a better way of putting things: they simply held on to their lands and grew 



THE SCHUYLKILL. 263 

rich by their rise in value. Puttsville sprung up, as such places will in America, 
and to-day is the beautiful town of Pottsville. (Potts, you see, is a more 
elegant name than Putts, and the Potts are certainly a ver)- ancient family, 
dating back, we believe, to the stone age.) Pottsville is well laid out. It 
has handsome dwellings and stores, bright, picturesque streets, horse-cars, 
saloons, hotels, churches, a little theatre, — in short, all the modern metropolitan 
improvements. Behind it rises Sharp Mountain, and looking over and down 
Centre street is the statue of Henry Clay on a tall pedestal, which has a whole 
hill for its base. If one wishes to drive about there are good roads among 
the hills, where he can see dusky villages of miners scattered along the great 
coal-basin. There is a sprinkling of the foreign element therein, chiefly Welsh 
and Swedish, and of late it has become a little turbulent and unmanageable. A 
mythical lady of dubious renown, Molly Maguire, has many desperate followers, 
whom the Law sometimes wants. The annual yield of the coal-held is between 
three and four millions of tons. Branches of railroad extend in various 
directions, as at Reading, burrowing among the black hills, and reaching the 
coal-depots on the Susquehanna. One feature of these roads is the inclined 
planes upon which the trains traverse the mountains. Near Ashland, we are 
carried over the Upper and Lower Planes of Gordon, two up-hill and adjacent 
inclinations. The Lower Plane rises over four hundred feet in less than a mile, 
at an elevation of nearly a quarter of a mile above the tide, and the Upper 
Plane, which is somewhat shorter, has a still greater elevation. There are four 
of these planes in the Schuylkill region, and until we are accustomed to them 
the sensation is not pleasant; for if anything should happen to the litde engine 
that is pushing the train up-hill, what would become of us? 

As we have confined ourselves hitherto to the Schuylkill, let us now retrace 
our steps to Port Clinton, and take a short flight up its lesser relative, the 
Litde Schuylkill. Presto! we are there. As lovers of the picturesque we 
have one thing to be grateful for, /. e., that the pursuit of anthracite under 
difficulties has clambered mountains and opened ravines which would have been 
inaccessible to common travel. Mammon has penetrated for us our wildest and 
most romantic scener^^ We have reached Tamaqua, twenty miles from Port 
Clinton, where we have a bit of dinner. Now we pass northward again, winding 
along the river as it toils around the mountains. The railroad track ascends so 
gradually that it is scarcely noticed. Past East Mahanoy Junction to Tamanend, 
and past Tamanend and Quakake Junction. We are no longer in the valley, but 
are getting among the mountain tops, passing through tunnels, and winding 



264 



A CENTURY AFTER. 



around curves, some of which are so sharp that the rear end of the train seems 
to be chasing the engine, and in a fair way to catch it. What devil's game of 
tao- is this? There will be a collision. Rest, perturbed spirit, rest: there is 
no dano-er. The view near Ouakake Junction is a grand one. Look out 
and see the trains ascending and descending the mountain side, the smoky 
locomotives and the long black trains creeping, creeping along, here on a 
level, and below on a steep plane, — the rim of the valley, an immense bowl 
of verdure, sprinkled with trees, which at this distance look like bushes, — 
far-stretching, rocky, primitive, — it is magnificent. Shall we go on across the 
narrow valleys until we see Catawissa creek rolling and lashing along its rocky 
channel, or shall we remain ? We remain, and note the scenery. Here we see 
the American forest in all its wildness : yonder some of the lower hills are 
completely cleared, and cultivated to their summits: others are covered with 
pines. The valleys seem dark and lonesome until the eye detects here and 
there a litde farm-house hiding for shelter from the cold north wind. How 
home-like those tiny snuggeries look, and all the more so because the smoke 
which rises from their chimneys is from wood, not coal. That thin white wreath 
reminds us of Moore, whom we have at last forgiven for his nonsense about the 
Schuylkill. 




COAL-BREAKER. 



PHILADELPHIA TO PITTSBURG. 



IF God made the country and man the town, as Mr. William Cowper 
declares, the dweller in town is sometimes so weary of the work of his 
fellows that he longs to behold the glorious creation of his Maker. The 
never-ending flatness of our streets, and the cleanly glare of our white shutters, 
become so oppressive at last that he must have a day's pleasuring where they 
are not. He has done Fairmount Park over and over again, and, if he is 
an adventurous rambler, he has clambered up and down the heights of the 
Wissahickon. These have their charms, as we have sung in our artless 
prose, but there is one charm which they do not possess, and which we must 
seek elsewhere — the breadth and beauty of pastoral landscapes, such as lie 
in abundance along the lovely Chester valley, and beyond on the route to 
Pittsburg. Let us step on board the train at Mantua, and while we are moving 
Chesterward let us note what we see, or what is near by, and discourse about 
it in our leisurely and discursive way. We have left Mantua, Hestonville, 
and Overbrook, which are within the corporate limits of the city, and are 
nearing Merion. It is in Montgomery county, which was originally a part of 
Philadelphia, and remained so until after the Revolution. We have come far 
enough to detect the general character of the scenery, and to report upon the 
thousand advantages which railroads have given us. Only a poet, and a 
thoughtless one at that, can afford to decry them. How long would it take thee 
to walk from Mantua to Merion, my sentimental Penseroso? More than an 
hour, sirrah, and we have come in about ten minutes. The swiftness of our 
iron Pegasus has shortened time and overcome space. The Pennsylvania 
Railroad enables us to live in suburban residences and do business in town, 
and brings us from the heat of the crowded streets into the pure, fresh country 
air. Walk, an thou wilt; we prefer to ride. Thou art out of place in any 
Mantua in America : trudge away to Mantua, in Italy, where belike thou wilt 
find the puling young Romeo in the shop of the lean Apothecarj'. 

Wynnewood, which we have reached, commemorates the name of Thomas 
Wynne, who came over with the early colonists and settled in the neighborhood, 
where his descendants remain. That he was a person of repute, this sturdy 







>< 

H 
J 

> 

erf 
u 

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PHILADELPHIA TO PITTSBURG. 267 

Welshman, may be inferred from his being made president of the first Colonial 
Assembly of Pennsylvania. South of Haverford station, which we are passing, is 
Haverford College, which is owned and controlled by Friends, though open to 
students of all denominations. There are cotton and woolen mills back, and, as 
at Elm, boardinsf-houses for summer visitors. A few miles south of the colleo-e 
is the birthplace of a famous man, whose dust reposes in London, in the great 
cathedral of St. Paul's. He was born an artist, — beginning in his seventh year 
by a drawing of his sister's baby in red and black ink, and continuing, like the 
young Audubon fort}' years later, by copying in water-colors the flowers and 
birds around him. Portrait-painter in Philadelphia at sixteen, student in Italy 
at twenty-one, settled in London at twenty-five, he was the favorite painter 
of George the Third, who, for nearly forty years, was his good friend and 
munificent patron, and who wished to honor him with knighthood, as he had 
honored his friend Joshua Reynolds. You have seen the picture which he 
painted in his old age for the Pennsylvania Hospital, and another picture of his 
in the Academy of Fine Arts. To name "Christ Healing the Sick," and "Death 
on the Pale Horse," is to revive the illustrious memory of Benjamin West. 
We are in Delaware count}^, at Villanova, which, like Haverford, is a collegiate 
town, the Augustinian Fathers having an institution here, containing twelve 
professors of arts and sciences. Delaware county was originally in Chester 
county, but about ninety years ago it was separated from it, and has since 
flourished independently. It borders largely on the Delaware, and is a rich 
meadow country, devoted to dairy-farming and stock-raising. It was at Chester 
that Penn landed, as we told you on our journey down to the Delaware 
breakwater, but we did not tell you how the town, which was then Upland, 
obtained its present name. They landed there, Penn and his party, and 
he turned to his friend Pearson and greeted him. "Welcome," he said; 
" Providence has brought us here safely. Thou hast been the companion of my 
perils. What wilt thou that I shall call this place ?" Pearson replied, " Chester, 
in remembrance of the city from whence I came." Whether the Friends who 
had preceded the Founder in Upland, and the earlier-setding Swedes, were 
consulted in regard to the new name of their town, is not stated. The territory 
about was acquired by treaties with the Leni Lenapes, which are curious 
reading. The first, which was signed by an Indian named Wingehone, conveyed 
to Penn all his land on the west side of the Schuylkill, beginning at the first 
falls, and extending back, "so far as my right goeth." By a later treaty, made 
in the same year, (1683,) the lands between Chester and Pennypack creek 



A CENT CRY AFTER. 




COATESVILLE BRIDGE. 



were conveyed : " This indenture witnessed!, that we, Packenah, Jackhane, Sikals, 
Portquesott, Jervis, Essepenarck, Felktrug-, Porvey, Indian kings, sachemakers, 
right owners of all lands from Yuing Yuingus, called Duck creek, unto Upland, 
called Chester creek, all along the west side of Delaware river, and so between 
the said creeks backwards as far as a man can ride in two days with a horse, 
for and in consideration of these following goods to us in hand paid, and secured 
to be paid, by William Penn, Proprietary of Pennsylvania, and the territories 
thereof, viz." Then follows a list of these goods, which were at once useful and 
ornamental, ranging from guns, powder, lead, tomahawks, knives, awls, needles, 
and wampum, to tobacco and beer and looking-glasses and jew's-harps, all of 
which may have been worth five hundred dollars. There is something odd 
about these treaties, which, modernly considered, seem to conflict with each 
other, — different parties on the one side conveying and reconveying the same 



PHILADELPHIA TO PITTSBURG. 269 

lands to the Founder on the other side. Watson gives us the substance of one 
of these old treaties, which he says was made two years after the one we have 
quoted from, and in which figure the barbaric names of four Indian sachemakers, 
apparently conveying lands before conveyed, and he mentions the goods which 
were given in consideration for it. They consisted of fathoms of duffels and 
strawed waters, shoes, stockings, shirts, caps, combs, and hawks'-bells, besides 
their customary hardware, guns, knives, and awls, powder and lead, of course, 
and forty pounds of red lead. 

We are in Chester county, in Chester valley. It varies in breadth from 
two to four miles, and is bordered by a long continuous range of high ridges 
called the North and South Hills. From these miniature mountains, which are 
densely wooded, we look up and down the lovely valley for miles, taking in 
at a glance the cultivation of man and the fertility of nature. It is a beautiful 
landscape which we behold — thousands and thousands of acres of pastures and 
farm-lands, dotted with houses and barns, that cluster together, here and there, 
around church-spires, sprinkled with clumps of trees, and clothed in Nature's 
universal mantle of grass. If it were spring now we should see the farmers 
sowing, if it were summer they would be in the fields with mowers and loaded 
hay-carts. The cattle are feeding in the pastures, and the feathered tenantry of 
the farms are picking up their daily provender, though, of course, we do not 
see them at this distance. We know they are there, however, as well as the 
cows, for we get our eggs, our poultry, and butter from Chester county. At 
the edge of the great valley, which Watson says was originally settled by Welsh 
emigfrants, stands the town of Paoli. A notable feature of Paoli is the old 
tavern, which dates back before the Revolution, and bore the name of that brave 
Corsican gentleman. General Paoli, who was at the time turning the heads of 
the English, particularly the addled head of Boswell, at the Garrick-Shakespeare 
Jubilee. A darker memory attaches to Paoli. There was a bloody deed done 
here, or, more strictly speaking, about half a mile south-west of Malvern, which 
is two miles away. The battle of Brand)'wine had been fought, and Washington, 
who had withdrawn across the Schuylkill, sent General Wayne to harass the 
rear of the British, who were advancing on Philadelphia. Wayne encamped at 
some distance from the road, but his presence was known to the tories of the 
neighborhood, who piloted General Grey thither through the woods. He drove 
in the pickets, and fell on the sleepers. A few volleys were fired, and all was 
over. No quarter was given : one hundred and fifty were killed in cold blood : 
the enemy set fire to the straw, and all the wounded who could not escape 



270 



A CENTURY AFTER. 



were burned to death. But for the coolness of Wayne, who rallied and covered 
the retreat, all would have been cut off. The " Paoli Massacre " occurred on 
the nio-ht of September 20th, 1777. The bodies of fifty-three of these murdered 
victims of British barbarity were found near the field and buried in one grave, 
and forty years afterwards a marble monument was raised over them by the 
Republican Artillerists, of Chester county. Wayne, you may like to be reminded, 
was born about a mile and a quarter south of Paoli. He was at Germantown, 




LANCASTER. 



as we said, at the battle of Brandywine, everywhere ready and cool, and he 
immortalized himself at Stony Point. Pennsylvania is proud of " Mad Anthony 
Wayne." 

We are beginning to leave the valley at Glen Loch, where we passed 
iron-mines, marble-quarries, and lime-burners. At Oakland we saw more 
burners and miners, and the white marble we are familiar with in our city 
architecture, and looking back along the tAventy miles of the valley that we 
had traversed, we recalled the sloping hills, densely covered with chestnut 
sprouts, and enriched with innumerable springs, which steal below, and, like 



PHILADELPHIA TO PITTSBURG. 271 

Br)'ant's complaining brooks, make the meadows green. Downino-town has its 
Revolutionary memories, and the dubious fame of that grim freebooter, Jim 
Fitzpatrick. 

When the Coates family, Friends, who came over from Montgomerj-shire, 
England, shordy after Penn, and located themselves on the Brandywine, they 
could no more imagine the transformadon that would take place here than poor 
old John Fitch could have imagined the American and Red Star Lines when 
his crude little boat was paddling away to Burlington at the rate of eio-ht 
miles an hour. Those simple-minded old agriculturists lived seventy or eio-hty 
years before the discovery of the black stone that would burn, and a hundred 
and fifty years before the iron horse had fully proved itself in harness. How 
long would it have taken them to go from Coatesville to Philadelphia? Let 
Dryasdust, who knows all old-time matters, figure it up for you: we prefer 
to look out of the window as the train moves alone the railroad brido-e that 
crosses the Brandywine, at Coatesville, and see what is to be seen. This 
bridge, which is a magnificent one, is made of iron; it is six hundred and 
thirty-si.x feet in length and is seventy-three feet above the river, which comes 
stealing down from above. The smoke pours darkly out of the furnace-stacks 
below, and we fancy we hear the clatter of machinery in the cotton and woolen 
mills as we go dashing across the bridge. The country through which we are 
passing may be described as an undulating one, with glimpses here and there 
of higher hills in the distance. Past Parkesburg and its rolling-mill; Chrisdana, 
where the "Peculiar Institution" caused a riot twenty-five years ago; the Gap, 
the highest point on the road between the Schuylkill and the Susquehanna; and 
Kinzer's, the only place in America where nickel mines are worked. At last 
we are at Lancaster. The city and county of Lancaster have each a varied 
history. The county was first setded about the year 1700, by English and 
Welsh Friends and German and Irish emigrants. The German element was 
a religious one, as along the Wissahickon, consisting largely of Mennonists 
and Dunkers. The first setdement of Lancaster City was made before the 
creation of the county in 1729, at which time the only building standing within 
the present municipal limits was a tavern, with a sign of a hickory tree. The 
removal of the seat of justice here added to the population and importance 
of the place; so much so, that in a litde over twenty years it contained five 
hundred houses and two thousand inhabitants. "It was a growing town and 
making money, having then a manufactory of saddles and pack-saddles." 
Treades were made with the Indians at Lancaster, and they were generally 



272 A CENTURY AFTER. 

kept until after the expedition of Braddock. The defeat of Braddock was an 
opportunity which they seized, and soon the whole frontier, from the Delaware to 
the Potomac, was lighted with the blaze of burning cottages. The Scotch-Irish 
Presbyterians along the Susquehanna were exasperated, and after a series of 
dreadful murders, a party of them attacked the Indian village of Conestoga, 
near Lancaster, massacred all they found there, and set fire to their dwellings. 
The "Paxton Boys," who were so-called after one of their townships, figure still 
further in history, but it is not pleasant reading. Let us turn the leaves until 
we come to a brighter page. It was the first Thursday and Friday in June, 
the opening of the annual fair or market at Lancaster. The streets were lined 
with tables and booths covered with merchandise. "There were silks, laces, and 
jewelry; calicoes, gingerbread, and sweetmeats, such as the ladies love, — and that 
was the time when they got plenty of them, too, for the young fellows used to 
hoard up their pocket-money for months together to spend at the fair. Then 
the corners of the streets were taken up with mountebanks, rope-dancers, and all 
the latest amusements. To see these each young man took the girl that pleased 
him most, or, if he had a capacious heart, he sometimes took half a dozen." 
There Avas the sound of violins in every tavern, and there were taverns galore, 
with portraits of the kings and statesmen and warriors of Europe on their signs. 
The Continental Congress went to Lancaster after the battle of the Brandywine, 
and the old British barracks there were used as a prison for captured British 
soldiers. The city was incorporated in 1777, and in 1799 was made the capital 
of the State, and remained such until 181 2. Lancaster is a city of manufactories, 
cotton-mills, boiler and locomotive works, woolen and flour mills and breweries. 
It has twenty-six churches, the Dunkers having one; a college, a children's 
home, and, what our imperfect civilization has still to maintain, a prison and a 
poor-house, with a hospital and a lunatic asylum. 

Just before we reach Elizabethtown we pass through the only tunnel on the 
road for about two hundred miles. As we near Conewago the character of 
the scenery changes, — the fertility which has accompanied us so far is lost 
in the unproductive soil, which is strewn with fragments of rocks. We cross 
Conewago creek, over a rough, wooded gorge, whence we obtain a glimpse of 
the Conewago valley. Near Middletown, four miles further on, we catch our 
first glimpse of the Susquehanna, twinkling around its little islands, with its 
dusky mountain background. If we were commercial travelers (which, Heaven 
forbid !) we might gossip as we went on about the industries of the towns we 
passed, — the furnaces, car-works, iron-works, and boat-yards of Middletown ; the 



PHILADELPHIA TO PITTSBURG. 




lime- '■ 

burning 

of Bainbridge; 

the Pennsylvania Steel 

Works of Baldwin. If we 

were historic travelers, we might 

gossip about the "Paxton Boys," whom 

we dislike, in spite of their religion and 

the barbarities of the Indians. But as we 

are neither, we will delay no longer, but 

be at Harrisburg. 

There came, it is said, in the good 
ship "Welcome," which bore Penn and 

his companions to the New World, a Yorkshireman, named John Harris. He 
was of an adventurous turn of mind, for, instead of setriing permanendy in 
Philadelphia, where he cleared lands, or in Chester county, to which he removed, 
he struck w^estward through the wilderness, among the Indians, with whom he 
became a trader. If he did not bring a wife with him he had one here, and 
they lived on the Susquehanna. He dealt in furs, which he transported to 
Philadelphia on pack-horses, receiving from thence his supplies by the same 
mode of conveyance. An agriculturist as well as a trader, he is thought to 
have introduced the plow here, and he established a ferry to accommodate 



HARRISBURG. 



274 A CENTURY AFTER. 

travelers through the Kittatinny valley. At the time of his settlement on the 
Susquehanna, which was about 1725, there were Indian towns on the other 
side of the river, inhabited by the Six Nations, who could summon hundreds of 
their warriors at a signal. They were addicted to fire-water, and when drunk 
were quarrelsome, and when not drunk enough, if not wheedling, were more 
quarrelsome still. They came one day to the store of John Harris, demanding 
ammunition and rum. He refused them rum, — of which they had already had 
enough, — whereupon they seized him and tied him to a mulberry tree in his 
yard, with the intention of burning him. The fire was kindling, when up came 
another party, and he was released, unsinged and uninjured. When he died, — 
an old man, — some twenty-three years later, he was buried at the foot of this 
tree, as were also two of his children. The tree has gone, but an enclosure 
preserves the spot where it stood. So much for John Harris, who was 
practically the founder of Harrisburg. His wife, Esther, is said to have 
been the best trader of the two. She had education enough to write, and 
was resolute and masculine, — boxing the ears of the Indian chiefs when they 
were drunk or unruly; and she had religion enough to carry her son John to 
Philadelphia to be baptized. She is said to have rode there, on an emergency, 
in one day, on the same horse; and at another time, when trading at Big Island, 
and hearing of the illness of her husband, she came down in a day and a night 
in a bark canoe. John Harris, the second, who was born in 1726, and was the 
first white child born west of the Conewago hills, succeeded his father and 
accumulated wealth. Harrisburg has no Revolutionary history, other than that 
when the Declaration of Independence was promulgated John Harris loaned 
the government of the revolting colonies the considerable sum of three thousand 
pounds, taking treasury certificates for the same. He was patriotic enough to 
believe in the Revolution, and far-sighted enough to believe in his land on the 
Susquehanna, which was not laid out as a city until 1785, six years before his 
death. He was impressed with the idea that at some future period it would 
be the capital of the State, and he conveyed to commissioners four acres of 
ground, in trust, for public use and such public purposes as the legislature shall 
hereafter direct. The town was first called Maclaysburg, after William Maclay, 
the son-in-law of John Harris, who owned the land upon which the upper part 
of the cit}' is built, and was one of the first representatives of Pennsylvania 
in the United States Senate. It became, in 181 2, the capital of the State, 
as Harris had hoped. It is curious to read, in the pages of Watson, the 
recollections of Robert Harris, the son of John Harris, the second: how he 



PHILADELFHIA TO FI2 TSBURG. 




ON THE JUNIATA. 



had seen three different houses, one hundred and fifty feet long, filled with furs; 
how they had plenty of wild turkeys and deer in the Revolution, (he was eight 
years old when it commenced.) and how he and his father killed as many as 
twenty bears that were crossing the ri\cr; how he saw the remains ot his 
grandfather's block-house and stockade, and how an Indian came in one night 
with his gun and fired at an English officer, and, the pan flashing, how his 



276 A CENTURY AFTER. 

grandmother, the ready-witted, stout-hearted Esther, blew out the candle for 
concealment; how he saw a man that was scalped; all this, mind you, the 
recollections of one man, who was born here. Such was the Harrisburg of 
the olden time. The Harrisburg of to-day belongs to a different order of 
thincrs. It does not do a very large business in peltry, but it moves a little 
in the production and work of iron and steel and the building of railroad cars, 
employing over fifteen hundred men in these branches of manufacture, and 
hundreds more in machine-shops, tanneries, planing and flour mills, and the 
like. It has no block-house and stockade, but their place is supplied by the 
capitol buildings, which overlook the river from their ornamental grounds; by 
its churches, of which there are fifteen; its halls and banks, its academy, 
seminary, and public schools. What with these and the situation of the city, 
the sparkling river and its verdant islands, the rolling hills and blue mountains 
in the distance, one may do worse than be at Harrisburg. 

At Rockville, we reach the Kittatinny mountain, the first of the Allegheny 
range, and before we know it we are crossing the Susquehanna on a bridge 
more than half a mile long. The views from this bridge are magnificent. If 
we look to the north we see the great mountains which the river has sundered 
in its passage, and which have left memorials of the battle wherein they were 
once engaged, in the rocks that were torn from their rough sides, and now 
cumber its channel, breaking it into rapids and fretting it into foam. If we 
look to the south we see the broad, bright, calm river sweeping past its little 
islands and the fertile farms of its banks. We follow it until we can distinguish 
the cit>^ we lately left, some four or five miles away, and in the distance the 
blue hills of Cumberland and York. We are in Perry county, which may be 
said to be walled in by two great mountain ranges, the Kittatinny on the 
south-east and the Tuscarora on the north-west. Nor are these all, for it is 
intersected by many lesser ranges which divide it into valleys, all fertile, 
cultivated, and well watered. We have here an indication of the character of 
the scenery we shall meet: now, the wild picturesqueness of passes between 
the mountains, whose steep, precipitous sides plunge abruptly into the water, 
and anon, their gradual withdrawal, their falling back, their retreat, and the 
triumphant gatherings of man in the rear, in the green fields, in the farms 
and orchards, in the houses and barns and villages. The early settlers here 
were Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, who pushed their way up into the valleys, as 
their hardy brethren had done in Lancaster county and in the Cumberland 
valley. They suffered, like the rest of their race, from the incursions of the 



2^8 A CENTURY AFTER. 

Indians, who were perpetually on the war-path, and many families were 
massacred. Whether they allied themselves with the Paxton Rangers, and 
aveno-ed their wrongs in the primitive fashion of the time, we are not told; 
but it is quite likely, for murder begets murder among Christian people as 
well as among savages. They were nearly exterminated once; but it is hard 
to destroy Irishmen and Scotchmen, and still harder the blood of both mingled 
in the same persons, so they remained and prospered. We have passed 
Duncannon and its iron-works and have come to Duncan's Island and the 
mouth of the Juniata. Duncan's Island contained a large Indian town, and 
was a favorite meeting-place for the tribes in the Juniata and Susquehanna 
valleys. David Brainerd, the missionary, who traveled among the aborigines 
of Pennsylvania about a hundred and thirty years ago, has left an account of 
the inhabitants of Duncan's Island, many of whom could speak English, and 
most of whom were drunken, vicious, and, of course, profane. He describes 
one of their priests, and as we have mentioned the Mennonists, the Dunkers, 
and other co-religionists, we will give his description of this clerical savage 
in his native wilds: — "He made his appearance in his pontifical garb, which 
was a coat of bearskins, dressed with the hair on, and hanging down to 
his toes, a pair of bearskin stockings, and a great wooden face, painted, the 
one half black, the other half tawny, about the color of an Indian's skin, with 
an extravagant mouth, cut very much away; the face fastened to a bearskin 
cap, which was drawn over his head. He advanced towards me with the 
instrument in his hand which he used for music in his idolatrous worship, 
which was a dry tortoise-shell with some corn in it, and the neck of it drawn 
on to a piece of wood, which made a very convenient handle." There were 
white as well as red settlers on Duncan's Island, and numerous outrages Avere 
perpetrated by the latter. The whites abandoned it twenty years before the 
breaking out of the Revolution, and four years later there was a bloody fight 
upon it between these, or other adventurous pale-faces, and the Indians. It' 
demanded courage to live here, and to escape hence when one's life was in 
danger. This courage was possessed by the Avife of the owner of the island, who 
saved her life and the life of a child by swimming the Susquehanna on a horse, 
with the child before her. It was a notable feat, for the river was a mile wide 
and was swollen with the spring freshets. They buried their dead here, and not 
far from their burial-place there was an old mound, which was destroyed, with the 
burial-place, by the construction of the canal, to the enrichment of relic-hunters, 
lovers of beads, arrow-heads, stone hatchets, and similar bric-a-bracery. 




VIEWS IN AND AROUND I'lTTSBURti 



28o A CENTURY AFTER. 

Nowhere in Pennsylvania can we find more varied landscapes than lie 
along the Juniata valley. In its hundred-mile journey from the Allegheny 
mountains to the Susquehanna, it overcomes every obstacle in its course; 
dashing boldly, in the olden time, against the stony walls it was to tear asunder, 
and when the whim seized the spirit of its waters, wildest of Undines, evading 
them by winding tortuously around and stealing secretly through little glens and 
valleys. The peculiar qualities of Juniata scenery, both as regards its serried 
mountain embankments and its sloping valleys and hills, are massiveness of 
outline and tenderness of tone : the loving hands of Nature have moulded all 
things into harmonious and beautiful forms. The valleys are nestling-places of 
pastoral landscapes, peaceful, plenteous, gentle,— homes of simple farmer-folk, 
and many of the hills are cultivated almost to their summits, which are crowned 
with forest trees. The Virginia creeper festoons nearly every tree in the river 
valley, climbing from the ground to its topmost branch, and occasionally the 
larger vines throw out their arms and bind several together in their clinging 
embrace. The railroad runs in some places, as we have seen, through and 
along these pleasant valleys, and at others through narrow ravines, where its 
path is carved out of the rocks. Here it enters a tunnel pierced through a 
mountain spur, and there, disdaining its errant wanderings, it boldly bridges the 
river, and goes straight on. He were a skillful and a lucky painter who could 
reproduce on his canvas the manifold beauties of the Juniata valley. 

Altoona has a history of its own, though not an ancient one. It is the 
creation of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, and only dates back to 1849, 
when its site was selected by them as a location for their workshops. Four 
or five years passed, and Altoona was incorporated as a borough. Great 
workshops were in operation, churches were built, and a large hotel, which was 
named after that famous old Indian, of whom his countrymen said, pointing at 
him as they passed his door, "Logan is the friend of the white man." A picture 
of the great Mingo chief is painted on the wall of the dining-room, resplendent, 
gorgeous, — lord of the vanishing wilderness. The lover of quiet should avoid 
Altoona, for what with the clanging of the engine-bells, the arrival and 
departure of trains at all hours, the loading and unloading of freight, and the 
unceasing patter and tramp of passengers, his meditations would be disturbed. 
Add to these the noise of the works, the machine-shops, the boiler-shops, the 
blacksmith-shops, the freight and passenger car shops, the planing-mill, and w^hat 
not besides, — a two-mile frontage of industry, and his jarring nerves will drive 
him to Prospect or Gospel Hill, or to Wapsononoc, whence he may behold the 



PHILADELPHIA TO PITTSBURG. 281 

whole Juniata valley. As Altoona stands at the base of the main Alleo-henies, 
it is here that the ascent begins. If we are observant when we start, we notice 
the steady movement of the train, which is laboring up a grade of more than 
ninety feet to the mile. The valley seems to sink and the gorge to deepen : 
the tops of the tallest trees are far below us. We have rounded Kittannino- 
Point, (an old Indian trail to and from the Delaware,) where the valley separates 
into two ravines, neither of which can be traversed by us, so, in order to oain 
another opening, we make a great horseshoe curve, and crossing both on a high 
embankment we sweep around the western wall. In the new pass we ascend 
through the heart of the range whose eastern summits rise and fade in the 
distance. Past AUegrippus and Bennington Furnace into the great tunnel, the 
little twinklino- lio^ht of whose farther end is the star to which we are feelino- 
our way in the enfolding darkness. We are more than twent)^-one hundred feet 
above the level of the sea, and we have more than thirty-six hundred feet to go 
into and through the summit of the mountain, which surrounds and presses upon 
our long, arched passage-way. We are through at last. 

Where the Allegheny comes winding down from the north-east and the 
Monongahela comes winding up from the south, and where the waters of both 
join and form the Ohio, stands the busy city of Pittsburg. We have seen, in 
little, almost from our point of departure, the great industries which have made 
Pittsburg what it is, and which have converged here as to a common centre. 
It is well built of brick and stone, which have rather a grimy look. In the 
eastern portion there are many handsome residences, and the suburbs, where 
these do most abound, are picturesque and beautiful. Its public buildings are 
more than noticeable. The City Hall, on Smithfield street, is a substantial and 
massive structure, and Trinity Church, on Sixth avenue, near Smithfield street, 
is a good example of Gothic architecture. St. Peter's Church and Cathedral 
and the Court-house, both on Grant street, will bear a favorable comparison 
with similar edifices in our older and larger cities. The importance of the site 
upon which Pittsburg stands was perceived by the French and the English, for 
its military value was understood by both. To repel a threatened encroachment 
on the part of the former, a regiment was raised in Virginia, which claimed the 
land hereabout, and sent to commence a fort at the junction of the Allegheny 
and Monongahela, Washington being its lieutenant-colonel. A small party were 
at work here on the 17th of April, 1754, when a large party of French and 
Indians came down in bateaux and canoes, with eighteen pieces of cannon, and 
commanded them to stop. The Virginians were brave men, but forty-one is no 



PHILADELPHIA TO PITTSBURG. 283 

match for a thousand; so, after a parley, they surrendered the post and marched 
away with all their materials. The seizure of this post by the French and the 
erection thereon of Fort Du Ouesne precipitated a war, and though they held 
it only four years, it was a disastrous period to the settlers in Pennsylvania, 
for they supplied their savage allies with arms and ammunition, and they raided 
along the frontiers, which were devastated with fire and blood. An expedition 
under General Forbes was dispatched against Fort Du Ouesne in 1758, and 
while the army was at Raystown, Major Grant, of the British regulars, was sent 
out as an advance with eight hundred men. He pushed on, and, arriving in 
sio-ht of the fort, encamped on the hill where the Court-house now stands, and 
made a reconnaissance of the enemy's works. How he attacked them the next 
morning and was defeated, with a large loss, was taken prisoner and sent to 
Montreal, does not immediately concern us. Enough that Fort Du Quesne was 
abandoned by the French shortly after this affair, and was repaired, reconstructed, 
and occupied by the English, who commenced new fortifications, which cost them 
sixty thousand pounds, and were considered formidable enough to secure to the 
latest posterity the British empire on the Ohio. 

We must not allow ourselves to trace, however briefly, the early military 
history of Pittsburg, but come to what more particularly concerns us, — its civil 
history. In 1764 Colonel John Campbell laid out in four squares that portion of 
the city lying between Water and Second streets and Ferry and Market streets. 
In 1769 the manor of Pittsburg, which belonged to the Penns, and embraced 
the area between the two rivers and extended south of the Monongahela, was 
surveyed, and in 1784 arrangements were made by their agents to lay it out in 
lots. This was done. Two years later the Pittsburg "Gazette" was started, and 
a post established to New York and Richmond. The number of houses here 
then is estimated at one hundred. In another year a public academy was 
established by the legislature, and another institution, which obtains largely in 
the country to-day, established itself, and made no end of trouble. It was the 
manufacture of whisky, which distillation, beyond any yet known, has a tendency to 
run "crooked." Shall we pay a tax upon it? said the distillers; we who revolted 
from England, when she taxed us, and who conquered her, too? Perish the 
thought ! There is no need to relate now the great Whisky Insurrection, which 
raised thousands of armed malcontents, who were ready for anjthing, but who 
were finally awed down by the forces of the Government. The first distillery 
here is supposed to have started soon after the town was laid out in lots, and 
in the same year the Penns sold the privilege of mining coal on the hill forming 



A CENTURY AFTER. 




NEW BRIGHTON AND BEAVER FALLS. 



the south bank of the Monoiigahela. The importance of Pittsburg as a port 
was soon seen, and in 1797 the Government, fearing a war with France, ordered 
the building here of two armed vessels. A year before three distinguished 
foreigners resided in Pittsburg. They were Louis Philippe and two exiled 
princes of his house, and they proceeded to New Orleans in a skiff. Another 
Frenchman, the merchant Tarascon, of Philadelphia, established a house here, 
and began to build vessels to carry on his trade, — schooners and sloops, that 
ran to Philadelphia and the West Indies. Other and greater industries were 



PHILADELPHIA TO PITTSBURG. 285 

already at work. A steam-engine was in operation in 1794. The next year 
the manutacture of window-glass was commenced, and was followed two years 
afterward by a manufactory of green glass, concerning which its chief proprietor 
made a grim memorandum: "To-day we made the first bottle, at a cost of thirty 
thousand dollars." A hollow-ware foundry came next, then a steam flouring-mill, 
later a rolling-mill, and in 18 14 a cannon-foundry, from which have grown the 
great Fort Pitt Works. 

Pittsburg was incorporated in 1804. Within the next two 3'ears stages 
connected it with eastern cities, and a turnpike road over the mountains was 
begun. Five years later the first steamboat on western waters Avas built here, 
and proceeded to Natchez, and thence to New Orleans, with passengers and 
freight. Seven more boats were built within the next six years, and in 1840, 
twenty-nine years after the building of the first one, there were eighty-nine 
steamboats wholly or partly owned in Pittsburg", which became the centre of 
an immense trade, distributing its manufactures through the whole Ohio valley. 
In 1845 ^ large portion of the city was laid in ruins by a fire, and property 
to the amount of nine millions was destroyed. If one could use seriously the 
much-abused figure of the phoenix, Pittsburg rose from its ashes like that 
fabulous fowl, and in a few years was all the better for being burnt. Villages 
were hatched about it, along the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, and those 
on the latter and on the east bank of the former were taken into its nest, and 
now constitute one family or corporation. Allegheny City, on the west bank 
of the river, has preserved a separate existence as a city, though it is practically 
a part of Pittsburg, since it is connected with it by bridges, which make the 
principal streets of both cities continuous. If Pittsburg is rather grimy it is 
very healthy. If one should fall sick here there is the Pennsylvania Hospital 
to which he can be taken, if he is friendless and infirm ; and if he should 
chance to lose his mind, he will be received at Dixmont; if his boys and 
girls should prove vicious, the Pennsylvania Reform School will do its best to 
improve and educate them. The broad field of charity is well covered with 
homes for the friendless, widows, destitute women, destitute men, sheltering 
arms, a relief society, a dispensary, an infirmary, a house of industry, and four 
hospitals, beside the one we have named. If, with all these inducements to live, 
one should die, there are cemeteries in the vicinity, and a beautiful one on the 
banks of the Allegheny. There is a university in Pittsburg, and four colleges, 
two of which are for women, and three of which are theological. There is an 
opera-house and two theatres, sixteen banks, and forty safe-deposit companies. 



286 



A CENTURY AFTER. 



What has made the place what it is is its manufactories. Let us see wliat they 
are. Within what is I'cnown as Pittsburg there are, it is estimated, thirty-five 
miles of manufactories of iron, steel, copper, brass, glass, oil, wool, and cotton. 
These miles of manufactories are not all in Pittsburg itself, but are scattered in 
Allegheny City, West Pittsburg, Monongahela, South Pittsburg, Birmingham, and 
East Birmingham. They employ over thirty-four thousand men, whose annual 
wages are about eighteen and a half millions of dollars, the capital invested 
being about fifty-five millions, and the annual value of products nearly ninety 
millions. One-half of all the glass-works in the country are here. Forty firms 
run sixty factories, which employ nearly four thousand hands, who earn over 
two millions a year, and whose annual products are worth over five millions. 
Nearly twenty-seven millions are invested in iron manufactures, employing over 
fifteen thousand men, who consume annually six hundred thousand tons of 
metal, and whose products are worth more than thirty-six millions. There 
are sixty-eight coal-mining establishments, employing over six thousand men, 
whose annual products amount to about five millions. The annual shipment of 
coal by river is about two millions and one hundred thousand tons, by rail one 
and a half millions of tons, the home consumption being one and a half millions 
more. Thus much, figuratively speaking, for Pittsburg. But what shall we do 
and where shall we go? We can take a passenger boat, and go down the 
Ohio. We can cross the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers. There is a fine 
suspension-bridge across the former. Suppose we go to New Brighton and 
Beaver Falls. At the latter place there is a rock of alum three hundred feet 
high. Or suppose we go to Allegheny City, where there is a park. To New 
Brighton, Beaver Falls, and thence to Allegheny City, and then where we will, 
in and around Pittsburg. 




HUMBOLDT MnNUMEiNT, .-ALLEGHENY PARK. 



ERIE TO PHILADELPHIA. 



IN going from Erie to Philadelphia we traverse the whole State of 
Pennsylvania, from its north-western to its south-eastern corner, and pass 
through scenery the most varied, and places abounding in reminiscences of 
historic interest. We must not allow ourselves to be detained too long by 
the last, which bear a marked resemblance to those which tracked us on the 
way to Pittsburg, and may be said to be reminders of battles and massacres, 
contending shocks between the red and white races. Erie has an Indian history, 
in that the southern shores of the lake on which it stands were once occupied 
by a powerful tribe, the Eries, or Irrironnons, who were exterminated by the 
Five Nations, about two hundred and twenty-two years ago, and in that the 
French, who finally overcame the hostility of the conquering tribes by their 
diplomacy, built a fort at Erie, which was the first European setdement on the 
southern shore, and which, when it had passed into the hands of the English, 
was surprised by savages, led by Pontiac, and its whole garrison massacred, 
with the exception of one soldier, who escaped, and a woman who was taken 
prisoner. This was thirteen years before the Revolution. Presqu' Isle was soon 
retaken, and treaties were made with the Indians, but it was not until the 
success of Wayne's expedition, in 1795, that there was peace throughout the 
North-west. The town of Erie was laid out in that year, and the next year 
was the honored burial-place of Wayne, who died here in a log cabin, and was 
interred at the foot of the flagstaff within the fort, where his body remained 
until 1809, when it was removed to Radnor churchyard, near the old Wayne 
homestead in Chester county. The growth of Erie was slow for a long time. 
It was incorporated in 1805, though it numbered less than one hundred houses, 
and depended mosdy on the trade that was carried on here, in supplying the 
settlers of the Ohio valley with salt from northern New York, and through the 
old French portage to the Allegheny river and Pittsburg. This route Avas used 
during our second war with England for supplying the garrison and squadron 
on the lake. The natural situation of the harbor pointed it out as a suitable 
place in which to build a navy to protect our interests on tlic northern waters, 
and thither repaired Captain Perry, who in eight or nine months had a little 



A CENTURY AFTER. 




fleet of nine vessels, with fifty- 
four guns, ready for sea and for 
action. On tlie 9th of Septem- 
ber, 1813, he met the British 
squadron, which had three ves- 
sels less and nine euns more 
than his own. It was at Put- 
in-Bay, near the head of the 
lake, that the enemy attacked 
us. Their guns did considerable 
mischief to Perry's ships before 
he could bring his armament 
to • bear ; but when he came 
to close quarters, where our 
sailors loved to be, and his 
men warmed up to their work, 
he captured every vessel, and 
covered his name with glory. 
"Peace hath victories no less 
renowned than war," but they 
were not rapid or brilliant at 
Erie, which followed the ex- 
ample of Pittsburg, in building a 
steamboat five years later than 
that flourishing city. This boat, 
" Walk-in-the- Water," was not a 
thing of life to the town, which, 
as late as 1830, thirty-five years 
after it was laid out, had a pop- 
ulation of only fourteen hundred. 
About this time the system of 
internal improvements in Penn- 
sylvania was agitated, and the 
Rip Van Winkles of Erie rubbed 
their eyes, awoke, and specu- 
lation in their lots ran wild. 
The opening of the canal that 



ERIE TO PHILADELPHIA. 289 

connects the lake with the waters of the Ohio, and the building of the 
railroad that unites the West with New York, consolidated what before was 
a doubtful success. An attempt on the part of the Lake Shore Railroad to 
build a line in the vicinity of Erie, which omitted the town and its harbor, 
and sought to distribute travel and traffic to rival ports, created a war, for 
it was little less, between its citizens and the Lake Shore corporation, which 
lasted three years, during which the railroad was again and again torn 
up and interrupted. But there is an end to everything, even railroad wars, 
and the difficulties once adjusted, peace has since reigned at Erie. It is a 
delightful place in summer, for the cool breezes of the north come rippling 
freshly over the clear lake, and the scenery about is at once wild and 
romantic. Massasaugie Point, on the south side of Erie bay, whilom home of 
a vanished tribe, is devoted to picnics and pleasure-parties. The bluffs and flats 
are covered with trees, pines, oaks, cedars, hemlocks, and poplars, and the shady 
and sunny nooks are peopled with flowers and flowering shrubs. Erie is the 
centre of lake commerce, which has increased so largely that in 1872 one 
hundred and fourteen foreign and twenty-two hundred and seventy-eight 
coastwise vessels entered and cleared. The finest steam-propellers on the lake 
run to and from this place, and a United States steamer makes it her station 
and winter quarters. The industries of Erie embrace the various manufactures 
of iron, organs, boots and shoes, etc. The Pennsylvania Railroad Company has 
coal wharves on the lake, and there is a grain elevator, and all the bustle of 
trade on land and water. There are seventeen churches, an academy of music, 
an opera-house, five halls, ten banks, two hospitals, an orphan asylum, two public 
libraries, several hotels, an academy, good schools, and all this with a population 
of twenty thousand. Of the future greatness as well as the present prosperity 
of Erie, there can be no doubt. 

Proceeding on our way we come to Waterford, after a run of about twenty 
miles, a pleasant little borough on Le Boeuf lake and creek. We strike here 
the track of the French, on the trail, we may say, remembering the wilderness 
which then covered the country, and the savages who were their allies. We ' 
intend to give both a wide berth, as we certainly would have done in the 
middle of the last century, so we will merely mention that the French had a 
fort at Le Boeuf, (which derived its name, by the way, from the immense herds 
of buffalo found in the vicinity,) and that it soon passed out of their hands. 
The prjesent town was laid out in 1794, though it was not until the following 
year that its name was changed to Waterford. The population, all told, is less 



A CENTURY AFTER. 




LOCK HAVEN. 



than eight hundred, but it contrives to do a fair business in making boots and 
shoes and firkins and tubs. The produce of the dairy should be added to its 
other industries. Through Union, which contains about double the population 
of Waterford, and is devoted to manufactures of wood, oil barrels, pumps, and 
furniture, and through Concord and Corry. Fifteen years ago the site of Corry 
was a wilderness. The discovery and development of petroleum in Venango 
county and the completion of the Oil Creek Railroad to Titusville, created 
Corry, which was built up rapidly. The bubble burst, as we know, but the 
prosperity which it brought to Corry remained, and turned its activity into other 
channels. There are extensive oil-works here, manufactories of wooden-ware, 
furniture, sashes, and blinds, brushes, fork and spade handles, boring-machines, 
iron-works, saw and flour mills, railroad-shops, cooper-shops, shingle-mills, and 
tanneries. Through Pittsfield and Youngsville to Irvineton, which has a pleasant 
Indian memory in the shape of the brave whom Cornplanter sent to the cabin 
of General Irvine as a guard when his life was in danger. This old chief was 
an honor to his race, for, though in his youth he had been the unrelenting 
enemy of the first settlers, when the land owned by the Seneca tribe, of which 
he was chief, was ceded to Pennsylvania by the treaty of Fort Stanwix, he 
received a small reservation in it, and spent the last years of his long life in 
peace and friendship with his white neighbors. His reservation was twelve 



ERIE TO PHILADELPHIA. 



291 



miles above Warren, -which we have reached, and which stands at the junction 
of the Allegheny and the Conewango. The count)' from which it takes its name 
was of such slow growth that in twentj' years after its creation it numbered 
less than two thousand inhabitants. It abounds with streams and creeks, which 
are outlets to a large lumber business, and have been any time within the last 
sixty years. Old and young were alike interested in the departure of the rafts 
with the spring tides, and forty years ago there was scarcely a boy of twelve 
living on any stream in the county who had not made his voyage to Cincinnati, 
perhaps to New Orleans. The growth of the town of Warren wa§ as slow as 
that of the county. In the first forty years of its existence it failed to reach 
a population of eight hundred, but within the last score it has become one of 
the finest inland towns in Pennsylvania. The country just below it lies within 
the great oil field. There are iron-works and planing-mills here, and as we 
cross the Allegheny we see from the bridge the river banks strewn with 
log^s, and on the river orreat rafts afloat. Past the lumberies and tanneries 
of Sheffield, the saw-mills of Roystone and Wetmore, to Kane, which nestles 
among hemlocks and sparkles with streams and springs. Summer visitors to 
Kane will find, if sportsmen, deer and wild game in the forests, and, if anglers, 
trout in the mountain brooks. Past Ridgway, which perpetuates the name of 
a merchant of Philadelphia, who owned large tracts of land there, as the count)', 
of which it is the seat of justice, perpetuates the name of a mountain in its 
northern portion, — Elk, so called on account of the multitudes of that noble 
stag that once peopled its woods. 

Past St. Mary's, Beechwood, and Emporium, with their flourishing industries 
of coal, iron, and lumber; past Sterling and its mills, Sinnemahoning, Westport, 
and Renovo, where we skirt the river, with mountains on the eastern side, and 
past Farrandsville and Queen's Run, until we reach Lock Haven. We have 
come as the crow flies, if the crow flies straight, about one hundred and 
fift)^ miles, but actually by rail, winding and zig-zagging, about two hundred 
miles. We have traversed six counties, have crossed creeks, French creek and 
Broken-straw creek, which comes winding down from New York; have crossed 
rivers, the Allegheny at Warren; have skirted rivers, the Big Branch down 
to Ridgway; from Emporium down to Keating, the Sinnemahoning, and from 
Westport to Lock Haven, the Susquehanna. We have seen mountains in the 
distance, in Elk county, and at Young-woman's creek we passed between them. 
We have passed through a coal and iron and timber countr)', have seen the 
smoke of manufactories, have heard the whizzing of saw-mills, and beheld 



A CENTURY AFTER. 




BELLEFONTE. 



millions of dollars' worth of lumber. Lock Haven is the seat of justice in 
Clinton county, which was established thirty-seven years ago, and which, as a 
portion of Northumberland county, in Colonial and Revolutionary days, had a 
history similar to that of the counties we have crossed on our journey hither, — 
a history of hardy pioneer struggles and dangers, and final success. The town, 
which is on the left bank of the Susquehanna, was laid out, in 1834, by Jeremiah 
Church, an energetic man of business, who was wiser or luckier, in his day and 
generation, than the Boston capitalists who laid out Farrandsville two or three 
years before, and made a trifling loss of seven hundred thousand dollars. The 
name of this busy little city is derived from its situation, which is between 
two locks of the Pennsylvania canal. It prospered from its foundation, and is 
to-day the business centre of several important industries, chiefest of which 
is lumbering, wherein a very large capital is invested, controlling about one 
hundred millions of feet of lumber annually. There are two booms here, six 
saw-mills, and six planing and shingle mills, which are seldom or never idle. 
There are, besides, three foundries and machine-shops, a boiler manufactory, 
two tanneries, and manufactories of boots and shoes. In addition to these 
there is the usual mercantile business of a city of about seven thousand 
inhabitants. One can be comfortable at Lock Haven, and can see beautiful 
scenery, — wide river valleys and rough wooded mountains. 



ERIE TO PHILADELPHIA. 293 

While we are here we may as well lie over a few hours, and take a 
run down the Bald Eagle valley to Bellefonte. As we pass town after town 
alono- the road, we see what we have seen all along the route, — saw-mills and 
lumber at Beach Creek and Eagleville, and iron-works at Howard and Curtin. 
Bellefonte, which we are approaching, was laid out in 1 795, five years before the 
county of which it is the seat was organized. Centre county, which is so called 
because it is the geographical centre of the State, consists of wild mountain 
ranges and valleys, which traverse it from the north-east to tlie south-west. Bald 
Eao-le creek running throuoh one of these valleys in the same direction. There 
are four principal valleys, Penn's, Brush, Nittany, and Bald Eagle, and six 
mountain ranges, Tussey's, Path Valley, Brush, Nittany, Bald Eagle, and the 
Allegheny. Centre county abounds in rivers, creeks, and springs. Either from 
the marked character of the scenery through which they run, or from a paucity 
of invention in the minds of the early settlers along their banks, two of these 
repeat the names of Penn and Bald Eagle, the names of the others being 
Fishino-, Beech, and Moshannon creeks. There are other nameless litde streams 
and creeks, which gush out of the limestone rocks at the base of the 
Alleghenies. Bellefonte, near the most important of these, — Spring creek, — is 
pleasantly situated on high ground on the eastern base of the Alleghenies, and 
has a noble outlook. The sixty- two years that have passed since its incorporation 
have been prosperous ones to its citizens, who have enjoyed the honor of having 
one of their number serve in the House of Representatives and the Senate of 
the United States twenty-two years, and two more of their number on the bench 
of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. It has grown slowly, but surely, and 
contains to-day a large iron furnace, a rolling-mill, an axe-factory, and machine- 
shop. Its public buildings are eight churches, four banks, two halls, several 
hotels, an academy, and public schools; and near is a State agricultural college. 
We might find Revolutionary histories attached to the neighborhood. There 
certainly is a colonial history attached to Milesburg, two or three miles above, 
where the first setdement in the county was made by Colonel James Miles, 
about twenty-five years before Bellefonte was laid out, and there is an Indian 
memory, in the name of a red brave whose village was there, and whose wigwam 
was standing about forty years ago between two great white oaks. It is he, and 
not his fellow of the aquila family, the bald eagle, who is commemorated in the 
creek and valley and branch of railroad by which we shall return to Lock Haven. 

Bellefonte derives its name from a large and valuable spring, thirty or 
forty feet in diameter, so clear that we can see the sand at the bottom 



294 



A CENTURY AFTER. 



disturbed by the bubbling up of the water, and which not only supplies the 
town with water, but forces it through the pipes and hydrants. We should 
like to linger and look down into its cool depths, and dream of the dark 
under-world through which it flows, and out of which it rushes so brightly, 
and imagine its surroundings when Bellefonte was a wilderness. On second 
thoughts, however, there is no occasion for us to imagine anything about them, 
for Mr. Bryant's imagination is at our service in one of the noblest of poems, — 
"The Fountain." We will read it when we return to our books; in the 
meantime there are other leaves than his to turn, and the wind is turning 
them for us, as it goes playing hide-and-seek in the woods of Bald Eagle 
valley. From Lock Haven — whither we have returned — we proceed on our 
way eastward, through Wayne and Pine and Bard's, till we come to Jersey 
Shore. The name of this town strikes one as absurd, if he is not accustomed 
to our primitive nomenclature. How can a town be a shore? he asks himself, 
being considerably at sea, and how can Jersey be in Pennsylvania? It is one 
of the Dundreary sort of things that no fellow can find out. Not so fast, 
my lord; slacken your speed, abate your celerity, slow up. Jersey Shore 
is so called because its early settlers came from that paradisal region, the 
remembrance of which followed them in their new home. It was founded 
about the beginning of the present century by Jeremiah and Reuben Manning, 
Jerseymen, and brothers; and, as the name of General Wayne was then fresh 
in the minds of his countrymen, on account of his brilliant services against the 
Indians, it was bestowed upon the town. Waynesburg did not hit the popular 
fancy, however, but the old name did; so, when the town was incorporated, 
forty years ago, it was as Jersey Shore. We should like to draw upon our 
imagination here, as at Bellefonte, for glimpses of its surroundings in the olden 
time, but the remembrance of Mr. Bryant's skill in painting all that pertains 
to nature, his knowledge of the woods and waters, and his poetic sympathy 
with the bright and dark side of savage life, deter us from attempting to sketch 
in that direction. He could not help us, however, in regard to an ancient 
circular fortification which was visible, about forty years since, near Jersey Shore, 
and resembled those which are scattered up and down the Mississippi valley. 
Who were the builders of these works? It is admitted, we believe, that they 
did not belong to the race which the white man found in possession on his 
advent in the New World, but to a different, an earlier, and, doubtless, an 
extinct race. Who were they, whence did they come, and whither did they 
go? We can answer the last of these questions in part, for near this old 



ERIE TO PHILADELPHIA. 



295 




Pi 
o 
d. 

m 

< 



mound, fortification, or whatever it 
was, there were great burying- 
grounds, in which bones and rude 
trinkets were found, not unHke 
those which were disinterred at 
Duncan's Island, at the mouth of 
the Juniata. It is rather a pity 
that the traditions of the Indians 
were not collected two hundred 
years ago, as they were by School- 
craft in our time. But it was 
hardly to have been expected. It 
was the business of the missionary 
to convert these heathen savages, 
if he could, and not to preserve 
their trumpery old stories, and it 
was the business of the settler to 
keep his scalp on his head. 

Williamsport, which we have 
reached, is one of the first inland 
towns in the State. Its industries 
are akin to those which we have 
seen at sundry places along our 
route, the principal one being in 
lumber. This was commenced about 
twenty-five years ago by the con- 
struction of the first boom on the 
Susquehanna, and its growth was 
so rapid that there are now fifty 
steam saw-mills in operation on 
all kinds of lumbery for distant 
markets, the annual shipments of 
which amount to about two millions 
of feet. An idea of the magnitude 
of the business carried on may 
be gained from the simple state- 
ment that the boom company has 



296 A CENTURY AFTER. 

handled here, in ten years, between eight and nine millions of logs. Among 
other wooden miracles at Williamsport there is a manufactory of match-sticks, 
which turns out an absolutely bewildering number of millions of sticks, say 
about a hundred and four millions a day. Can any city anywhere match that? 
Besides this manufactory, there is a furniture factory here, and a boiler factory, 
and opposite the city, on the south bank of the river, there are large iron-works. 
Williamsport was laid out in 1795 by Michael Ross, a German, who owned 
the oTound upon which it was built, and who, seeing, no doubt, its future 
importance, made generous gifts of lands for public purposes. By a wise 
foresio-ht it was laid out in wide, straight streets, which were worthy of the city 
that was to spring up along and beyond them. Williamsport has all the modern 
improvements that obtain in our great cities, — wooden pavements on many of its 
streets, street-railways, gas, good markets, and an abundant supply of water from 
mountain springs. It contains twenty-nine churches, (one for about every five 
hundred inhabitants,) twelve banks, six hotels, six public halls, an opera-house, 
an academy of music, a seminary, a commercial college, and excellent public 
schools. Lovers of sport in its now corrupted sense, i. e., sporting-men, find 
themselves at home in Herdic Park, where there is a magnificent race-course, 
and followers of Izaak Walton are equally at home in the hatching-houses and 
trout-ponds connected with the park. It is one thing to catch trout, and 
another thing to watch trout, but the mere sight of them is not without interest, 
even to piscatory laymen. There are at least a half million of these little 
speckled creatures here, in all stages of diminution and magnitude. Williamsport 
is surrounded by beautiful scenery which abounds in pleasant drives. There is 
a suspension bridge across the river which comes winding along from the west, 
swollen a little with its mountain creeks, but still shallow enough to excite the 
apprehension of lumbermen, who watch for a rise of the waters to bring the logs 
down with as much anxiety as husbandmen watch the gathering of clouds in 
harvest-time. The view of Williamsport in the distance, with its high mountain 
background, its towering steeples, the steam-escapes from its saw-mills, the smoke 
of its factories, its booms and the rafts in the river, is animated and picturesque. 
The history of Lycoming count)^ of which it is the seat of justice, is the history 
of every county that we have crossed in our journey hither; but one page 
therein is so curious that we may be pardoned for referring to it. Briefly, then, 
the proprietary government had trouble with the white settlers who encroached 
upon the Indian lands after the treaty of Fort Stanwix, and they prohibited the 
making of any surveys north of Lycoming creek, there being a question whether 




LEVVISBURG AND VICINITY. 



298 A CENTURY AFTER. 

the stream mentioned in the treaty by the Indian title of Titidaghton was 
Lycoming creek or Pine creek. The disputed territory between these waters, — 
an area of from ten to fifteen miles in width, bounded on the north-east 
and west by mountain barriers, — was seized upon by these irrepressible 
settlers, who increased and multiplied largely. They were outlaws, in that they 
were outside the law, a fact of which they were well aware, and which they 
turned to the best advantage they could, by being a law unto themselves. 
They provided, therefore, for their own government, by electing annually three 
of their number, whom they called fair-play men, and who decided whatever 
was brought before them, from a disputed boundary to the weightiest matters 
of life and death. There was no appeal from their decisions, for every man 
in the community was prepared on the instant to enact the part of the grim 
old Virginia farmer, Justicer Lynch. They must have been a remarkable set, 
those extemporized forest Solons, for their decisions are said to have been so 
just that, when the settlement was finally recognized by the law, they were 
received as evidence, and confirmed by the judgment of the courts. A chief 
justice of the State once asked one of these settlers, an old Irishman, to 
enlighten him in regard to this defunct code: — "All I can say about it," he 
answered, "is, that since your honor's courts have come among us fair play 
has entirely ceased, and law has taken its place." Was that sarcasm or 
innocence on the part of that elderly Celt, — a male specimen of the genus 
Bos? And might we not say the same now in this Centennial Year of our 
Independence? 

While we have been prattling about fair play we have passed through Muncy, 
Montgomery, Watsontown, Milton, and have reached Montandon. Here we take 
the Lewisburg, Centre and Spruce Creek Railroad across the Susquehanna 
to Lewisburg, the seat of justice of Union county. It was laid out, some 
fifteen or twenty years before that county was established, by Louis Derr, a 
German, who had an Indian trading-post here towards the close of the last 
century, and whose memory was preserved in the first name of the place — 
"Derrstown." It is pleasantly situated on the west bank of the river, — a 
low-lying plat of verdure fringed here and there with trees, and bordered by 
a country road. Cattle, wading in the shallow stream, stare up at us as we 
pass, and the sun shining full on the frontage and roofage of the houses, the 
steeples of the churches, and the dome of the University, seems to welcome 
us to this busy little retreat of learning. Of the industries of Lewisburg there 
is no occasion to speak in detail, since they are identical with those we have 



ERIE TO PHILADELPHIA. 







JUNCTION OF THE NORTH AND WEST BRANCHES OF THE SUSQUEHANNA, FROM SUNBURY. 



already seen, with the exception of a boat-building yard, nor of the public 
buildings, banks, hotels, and so on. The University, however, is well worth 
visiting. It was chartered in 1847, and four years later its first class was 
graduated. It originated chiefly with the Baptists, and its organization gives 
them a leading influence in its affairs, but it is unsectarian in its management 
and character. Its course of studies is calculated to discipline, as well as 
instruct, the mind: generalities, not specialties, are aimed at. Arithmetic may 
help us a little; for, if we consider that the course of four years consists of 
thirty-six studies, one-sixth will be devoted to pure mathematics; one to Latin; 
one to Greek; one to mental sciences, including logic and rhetoric; one to 
natural science; and the last sixth to modern languages and applied mathematics. 
Text-books are adhered to, but not in all cases. There are, for example, weekly 
oral exercises of all classes in English composition and oratory, and oral lectures 



300 A CENTURY AFTER. 

on Eno-lish literature, on the history of Greece and Rome, England and 
France, and on ancient scholastic and modern philosophy and sesthetics. The 
financial condition of Lewisburg University is good. Its property, including 
land, buildino-s, apparatus, library, cabinets, and invested funds, is worth three 
hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and it is not in debt a dollar. It 
owns thirty-five acres, mostly woodland, and three substantial brick edifices, 
the coUeo-e proper, an English academy, and a young ladies' institute. From 
these buildino-s, which can accommodate three hundred students, there have 
o-one forth, in twenty-seven years, upwards of five hundred ahmtni and alumnce. 
These, however, do not so much concern us, picturesque tourists, as the 
University and its grounds, which are charming. There is a fine view of 
Lewisburo- from College Hill, and from the same elevation, looking south-east, 
a delio-htful o-limpse of the river, with Blue Hill in the distance. 

We have recrossed the Susquehanna and passed Northumberland, where 
the famous Dr Priestley, chemist and philosopher, spent the last ten years of 
his eventful and useful life, and where, in a litde cemetery overlooking the 
junction of the two branches of the river, his honored ashes rest. We are at 
Sunbury, the northernmost town on the main stream of the Susquehanna, whose 
two o-reat branches are united just above it; the western branch flowing along 
from the slopes of the Alleghenies, shadowed by forests and darkened by 
mountains, and the northern branch winding down from Otsego lake, two 
hundred and fifty miles away, fed by innumerable creeks. The scenery about 
Sunbury is very striking, the plain upon which it stands being overlooked by 
steep bluffs. The river here is a mile wide, — a magnificent stream, — and just 
below the town its waters receive the waters of Shamokin creek. It was laid 
out about two years after Williamsport, and, like that city, with wide, straight 
streets. Forty years ago it promised to be a place of more mercantile 
importance than it is at present; for at that time the belief was general that 
the Susquehanna could be navigated from its mouth in Chesapeake Bay to the 
junction of its branches at Northumberland. A steamboat was dispatched hither 
from Baltimore, and it not only reached Sunbury but proceeded up the northern 
branch as far as Danville, — an aquatic feat which was loudly trumpeted in the 
newspapers of the day. But nothing came of it and the place remained as 
it was, growing, of course, as every town in America does, in a live State. 
Sunbury is a live town, and could not well be otherwise if it would. It is 
the eastern terminus of the Philadelphia and Erie Railroad and the point of 
junction with the Northern Central and other roads. Those which go eastward 



ERIE TO PHILADELPHIA. 301 

from it run into the heart of the Shamokin coal region, some twent)- miles 
distant, and return laden from the mines. The annual amount of coal forwarded 
hence, by rail and canal, is about six hundred thousand tons. Where coal is 
there labor is. There are, tlierefore, at Sunbury great industries, which employ 
about one-fourth of its inhabitants; in steam saw-mills, planing-mills, grist-mills, 
oil-mills, and foundries. The shops of the Philadelphia and Erie and the 
repair-shops of the Northern Central Railroads are here. A prettier industry 
than obtains in these noisy manufactories adds a grace to the vicinit)', in the 
shape of vineyards, one of which yielded recently, in one year, ten tons of 
Concord grapes and four thousand bottles of wine. Whether grape-culture can 
be made to pay as an investment remains to be seen. The public buildings 
of Sunbury are such as we have noted all the way eastward from Erie, 
consisting of churches, banks, hotels, schools, an opera-house, a seminary, and 
an academy. 

No finer river scenery can be found in America than lies along the 
Susquehanna and its tributaries. To ascend it from the Chesapeake to 
Northumberland, a distance of one hundred and fifty miles, would be to see 
only the main stream that far: to ascend the North Branch as it goes winding 
away to the north-east to Pittston, and to the north-west and north-east into 
New York, would be to see only about four hundred miles of its crooked course: 
to ascend the West Branch as it 2:oes twisting along and around the mountains, 
would be to see only about two hundred miles of its lesser fork. These 
ascensions, if they could be made, would give but a faint idea of this great 
triple river. One may get a better impression of it, if he has a little 
imagination, by tracing it out on the map, beginning with cither branch, and 
following it on its serpentine way to Northampton. If he chooses the West 
Branch first, he sees it running up northerly to the base of a mountain range, 
where it turns and flows easterly till it reaches another range, which it keeps in 
sight twenty or thirty miles until it pierces it, and finally reaches Williamsport. 
If he chooses the North Branch, he sees it coming down from Otsego southerly 
and south-westerly until it strikes Susquehanna county, where it makes a great 
bend, and enters New York again, and, increasing its volume, runs crookedly to 
the south-east and south-west until it joins the West Branch just above Sunburj'. 
We note ten or twelve distinct mountain ranges along and adjacent to this 
branch, and half as many more neighboring the North Branch. The drainage of 
these mountains enters the Susquehanna through the multitude of creeks and 
rivers which empty their waters into its stream. From tiny rivulets to full-grown 



ERIE TO PHILADELPHIA. 



303 



rivers, their name is legion. We have already mentioned some of them, as the 
Sinnemahoning, Bald Eagle, and Lycoming creeks; but we have not mentioned 
some of the larger tributaries, as the Chenango, which enters it at Binghamton, 
the Tioga, which enters it at Pittston, and the beautiful Juniata, which enters it 
below. A bird's-eye view of this intricate net-work of water-courses, dropped 
among mountains and forests, in valleys and farm-lands, and at the feet of 
smiling villages, towns, and cities, would be a noble one, especially in the 
verdant months of the year ; but if it were surrounded by the gloom of autumn 
and the darkness of winter, — if the withered leaves were falling in the forests, 
and the mountains were whitened with snow, it would be dreary enough. 
Winter landscapes are delightful as art, but in nature they are lonesome and 
dreary. When great rivers like the Susquehanna and the Delaware are frozen 
over, it means mischief, as Hamlet says. Not so much then, as when the winter 
begins to break up, when bright, warm days come, and the snows are loosened 
on the mountain sides, — when the spring freshets precipitate their boreal 
accumulations into the creeks, the creeks into the rivers, and the rivers into the 
branches of the Susquehanna, — great aqueducts, swollen with turbid currents, and 
choked with floes and hummocks, for then mischief and danger and destruction 
may be, and should be, looked for. An ice-gorge is well enough as a picture, 
but such ice-gorges as we have in Pennsylvania exceed the limits of the 
picturesque. We mentioned one in the Schuylkill two winters ago. It was 
most tolerable and not to be endured, but it was nothing to those which occur 
at the Delaware Water Gap and at Port Jervis, where the broken masses are 
frequently piled fifteen or twenty feet above the surface of the river, threatening 
ruin to all below. Mr. Stedman is the only American poet who gives us even 
a hint of a real spring freshet: — 

" At last it came : five days a drenching rain 
Flooded the country : snow-drifts fell away ; 
The brooks grew rivers, and the river here — 
A ravenous, angry torrent — tore up banks, 
And overflowed the meadows, league on league. 
Great cakes of ice, four-square, with mounds of hay. 
Fence-rails, and scattered drift-wood, and huge beams 
From broken dams aliove us, mill-wheel ties, 
Smooth lumber, and the torn-up trunks of trees. 
Swept downward, strewing all the land about." 

We shall not trace the end of our journey as minutely as we traced the 
beginning, but follow the course of the Susquehanna, on the Northern Central 
Railroad, through the mountains that lead to the Shamokin coal region, the 



A CENTURY AFTER. 




YORK. 



Tuscaroras and the Kittatinny mountains, past the mouth of the Juniata, the 
Conewaeo hills, to Columbia and York. York is about fifteen miles from the 
west bank of the Susquehanna, in a direct line, and is the seat of justice of 
York county, which was a portion of the first territory acquired by Penn from 
the Indians thirteen years after his landing at Philadelphia. It was purchased 
for him by Governor Dongan, of New York, and four years later the grant was 
confirmed by two sachems of the Susquehanna tribe, but vaguely, in that it 
merely conveyed the Susquehanna river and lands adjoining the same. The 
Founder was not satisfied with this terra incognita, nor were the Conestoga 
Indians, who laid claim to it ; so, eighteen years after he was gathered to his 
fathers, the Six Nations conveyed to his descendants all the land as far north as 
the Kittatinny mountains, and west of the river as far as the setting sun, — an 
extensive tract, extending at that parallel as far as California. Four years after 
the death of Penn, this land, which was known as the Springettsburg manor, 
was surveyed, and settlements were made within its limits. The town of York 
was laid out in 1741, and so desirous were the proprietors to hasten its growth 
that they gave tickets to any person who wished to take up a lot, on the 
conditions that the owners of these tickets, which could be sold or assigned, 
should build upon the lots, at their own proper cost, a substantial dwelling-house, 



ERIE TO PHILADELPHIA. 305 

the moderate dimensions of wliich were stated, within the space of one year 
from the time of their entry for the same, and pay a perpetual rent of se\en 
shilUngs sterling per lot. Building proceeded so slowly here that at the end of 
ten years only fifty lots were improved. The county had then been formed for 
upwards of a year, and, while nowhere thickly settled, its inhabitants were an 
adventurous and hardy race, of whom the earliest were English, who were 
speedily followed by numbers of Germans and Scotch-Irish. They were among 
the first to resist the aggressions of Great Britain, and they raised a company 
of riflemen, who were the earliest in the field in Pennsylvania. It was two 
years before the Declaration of Independence, and the patriotic town from which 
they marched was York. The patriotism of York was strong in the times that 
tried men's souls, for others of its soldiers followed these ready sharpshooters; 
and when the battle of the Brandywine was lost, Congress retired here from 
Philadelphia and held their sessions in the old court-house. An Episcopal 
church had been built three years before, and a bell had been presented to it 
by Queen Charlotte, consort of his stubborn majesty George the Third, and this 
royal and disloyal bell somehow got into the cupola of the court-house, and now 
summoned the rebel Congress to their deliberations. One of their number, 
Philip Livingstone, of New York, a Signer, died here, and was buried in the 
cemetery of the German Reformed church. It was not until three or tour years 
after the close of the Revolution that York was incorporated, the establishment 
of the county having preceded it thirty-eight years. Its site, on both sides of 
Codorus creek, was well chosen, and its plan was modeled after that of 
Philadelphia, which one sees here in miniature, especially on market-days. Its 
industries are of the most varied character, those of iron predominating. 

We have mentioned incidentally two or three battles of Revolutionary 
and colonial days, Brandywine, Braddock's defeat, and sundry Indian fights and 
massacres; but they were mere skirmishes compared with a great conflict which 
was fought thirteen years ago, in the last days of June and the first days of 
July, about thirty miles from York. The Army of Virginia had eluded the 
Army of the Potomac, and had crossed Maryland into Pennsylvania, and reached 
the neighborhood of Gettysburg. Nature seems to have laid out the land for 
a stupendous batde-ground. The town stands on the northern slope of a hill, 
which faces another hill; behind it are other hills, a mile or two off, — Round 
Top and Litde Round Top; and on the western side a long, rising ground 
Oak Ridge, which extends two or three miles. Where the impending battle 
would be was setded by the first column of General Meade, which passed 




GETTYSBURG. 



ERIE rO PHILADELPHIA. 307 

through Gettysburg- on the ist of July and attacked the Confederate army. 
They fought well, but were overpowered; their general, Reynolds, fell by the 
bullet of a sharpshooter, and they were obliged to give way. They established 
themselves, however, on the hill south of the town, — Cemeter)' Hill, — and, during 
the night, General Meade came up with the bulk of his arm)', and bodi sides 
prepared to do or die. Our left was placed in position opposite Oak Ridge, 
our centre on Cemetery Hill, and our right along Rock creek. We presented 
a wedge to the enemy, which they tried to break on the afternoon of the 
2d of Jul}-, by repeated charges on the eastern and western slopes of 
Cemetery Hill. They were repulsed, but not disheartened; for the losses they 
inflicted were greater than they received. How the battle raged elsewhere, 
especially on our left, where Hancock and Hayes and Gibbon stubbornly 
confronted the corps of Longstreet, and where Sickles nearly lost the field 
by his foolhardiness, we have all read in the histories of the war. We fought 
till ten o'clock at night. The next morning came, and with it a tempest of 
artillery. In the afternoon General Lee made a desperate effort along his whole 
line to carry Cemetery Hill. A great arc of over one hundred guns rained 
down shot and shell, which, in a few minutes, cleared every exposed portion 
of it, filling the air with splintered fences, grave-stones, and trees. We reserved 
our ammunition for three hours, gradually slackening our fire, as if our batteries 
were being silenced. At last, at four o'clock, the Confederates made the last 
of their desperate charges up the western slope of the hill, where they were 
met, at first, by a volley of small arms, and then by an annihilating storm of 
grape and canister. The hardest fighting was, perhaps, at Round Hill, where 
cannon had been carried and planted, and where the men of Maine and Texas 
fought hand to hand with clubbed muskets and jagged stones. The Te.xans 
were hurled down the hill, the whole Confederate line reeled, and when the 
sun set that hot July evening the battle of Gettysburg was over. It was the 
turning point of the war, though it lasted nearly two years longer and cost 
us thousands of precious lives, and it ranks among the decisive battles of the 
world. Gettysburg, which, till then, was only known as the seat of justice of 
Adams county, became at once a famous spot, to which pilgrimages will long- 
be made. 

"When Spring, with dewy fingers cold 
Returns to deck their hallowed mould, 
She there sh.nll dress a sweeter sod 
Than Fancy's feet have ever trod." 



PHILADELPHIA TO SCRANTON. 




BETHLEHEM, FROM LEHIGH UNIVERSITY. 



F we take 
a run from 
Philadelphia to the Lehigh 
valley, the first place we 
strike will be South Bethlehem, 
on the south side of the Lehigh 
river. Bethlehem proper, on the 
north bank, has a history of its own, which is curiously connected with a 
remarkable person whose name is linked with the fortunes of its first settlers. 
It is Nicholas Louis von Zinzendorf, son of Count George Louis von Zinzendorf, 
councillor and chamberlain of August the Third, Elector of Saxony and King 
of Poland. Born at Dresden in 1700, he was placed, by the early death of 
his father, under the care of his grandmother, by whom he was educated. The 
theological atmosphere of her house excited the imagination of the child, who 
wrote letters to Christ and dropped them out of his window, in the hope that 



PHILADELPHIA TO SCRANTON. 309 

some heavenly air would bear them to their place of destination. At the age 
of ten he was sent to the University of Halle, where he established meetings, 
and founded the Order of the Mustard-Seed. These doings were reported 
to his uncle, who sent him, in his seventeenth year, to the University of 
Wittenberg, which had a better reputation for orthodoxy than Halle. Thither, 
nearly two centuries before, came a sturdy German, of twenty-five, as professor 
of scholastic philosophy, and there, just -two centuries before, when the Dominican 
monk, Tetzel, was peddling indulgences through Saxony, he posted ninety-five 
theses against such trumpery on the door of the Schlosskirche. When the two 
hundredth anniversary of this daring day came round, Zinzendorf shut himself up 
in his chamber, and bewailed the corruptions of the Church. When he was 
nineteen he left Wittenberg, and traveled in France and Holland, conversing 
everywhere with clergy-men. He was made a councillor at twenty-one, and at 
twenty-two he married a countess. About this time the Bohemian Brethren, a 
remnant of the stricter sort of Hussites, who had been persecuted, made their 
appearance in Saxony. Zinzendorf gave them permission to setde at Ebersdorf, 
an estate of his in Upper Lusatia. This settlement, which was at the foot of 
the Hutsberg, was known as Hen-nhut, which may be translated, "Protection 
of the Lord." He put himself practically at their head, and in 1727, when he 
resigned his position as councillor, he revised their ancient liturgy. He left his 
wife to manage his affairs, and devoted himself, his time and his money, to the 
support and advancement of his sect. Four years later he was at Copenhagen, 
at the coronation of the king^ of Denmark, where he conceived the idea of 
converting the Greenlanders. He had previously tried to convert the Jews, but 
finally concluded that the time for it was not come. He made two voyages to 
St. Thomas and St. Croix, in the West Indies, where he established missions. 
Banished in his thirty-ninth year, he wrote a catechism, which he modestly called 
the Good Word of the Lord, and sailed for North America, whither his disciples 
had preceded him. They settled first in Georgia, but in 1738 their settlement 
was broken up by the war between England and Spain. They then directed 
their attention to Pennsylvania, where, on the banks of the Lehigh, he and his 
daughter, a girl of sixteen, joined them in 1740 or '41. The name of the place 
is said to have been Beth Lecha, — house by the Lecha, — which would seem to 
have been the first name of the Lehigh; but, at the suggestion of Count 
Zinzendorf, who was probably present at a Christmas-Eve ser\'ice, held in a 
stable, in the rear of the Eagle Tavern, it was changed to Bethlehem. How 
long his mystical countship remained in the New World we are not clearly told. 



A CENTURY AFTER. 




EASTON, 



His chief business here was the establishment 
of missions among the Indians, preaching to 

his followers, and writing letters in explanation and defense of his doctrines. 
We find him afterwards in England, where he obtained an act of Parliament for 
the protection of the United Brethren, and in Russia, where the government 
ordered him to the frontier under the protection of a military escort. Such, in 
brief, was Nicholas George Count von Zinzendorf, who died in his slxtj^-first 
year, and was buried in his own estate at Herrnhut. 

Other names than that of Zinzendorf attach to Bethlehem, as those of 
Washington, Adams, Pulaski, Gates, Hancock, and Franklin. When Washington 
retired across the Delaware he removed his hospital and supplies to Bethlehem, 
the Moravians giving him the use of their buildings. He was supplied with 
domestic goods from the Sisters' House, selecting "blue stripes" for his wife, 
and stout woolen hose for himself In the spring of 1778 the Single Sisters 
presented Count Pulaski with a banner, which they had embroidered, in token 
of gratitude for his protection, and which was borne in his regiment until he fell 
in the attack on Savannah the following year. Many of the primitive buildings 
of the Moravians still remain. Among them is an old chapel, erected in 1751; 



PHILADELPHIA TO SCRANTON. 



3" 



the Congregation's House, the original chapel and residence of the clergy; 
the Sisters' and Widows' Houses, where aged and infirm women are cared 
for; and the old graveyard, home of all the living, where rich and poor 
moulder alike under plain slabs, with the simplest of epitaphs. There are 
new cemetery grounds at Nisky Hill, abounding in pleasant walks, and an 
island in the Lehigh, which in summer is gay with picnic parties. The public 
buildings of Bethlehem are six churches, a number of excellent schools, a large 
boarding-school for girls, and at South Bethlehem the Lehigh University, — which 
was founded by the Hon. Asa Packer, of Mauch Chunk, president of the Lehigh 
Valley Railroad, — a beautitul college edifice, with an observatory, houses for 
president and professors, seated in a park of forest trees, with an unobstructed 
view of twenty miles. The industries of Bethlehem are chiefly of iron and zinc, 
the Bethlehem Iron Company employing seven hundred hands, and the Lehigh 
Zinc Company as many more, the capital of each being a million of dollars. 

A run of twelve miles to the east brings us to Easton, — the starting-point 
of the Lehigh Valley Railroad, — a pleasant cit}^ trebly watered, which is situated 
at the junction of the Delaware, Lehigh, and Bushkill rivers. It was laid out 
in 1750, we are told, and was named, by Thomas Penn, after the house of 
his friend, Lord Pomfret. His lordship's name was not a good one to conjure 
with, for it brought neither peace nor prosperity to the first settlers of Easton. 
They had a hard time of it, as did most of their neighbors in the Lehigh 
valley, who came flocking here and to Bethlehem after the defeat of Braddock, 
hundreds of miles away, panic-struck with dread of the marauding Indians. A 
letter written on Christmas day, in the fifth year of the existence of the town, 
is melancholy reading: — "There are here three companies of soldiers, waiting 
for more arrivals, for the people here, though so injured, are very backward to 
engage in the service to revenge themselves. They are dispirited, and we must 
have men from a distance to be able to maintain these block-houses, which we 
purpose to build over the hills soon." The authorities were thoroughly aroused, 
and next year a proclamation was issued, imposing a bounty on Indian scalps. 
This, remember, was only twelve years before the Revolution. Thirty-four years 
later Easton was incorporated as a borough, and sixty-eight years later it 
received a second charter of incorporation. It was regularly planned, and a 
public green, called the Circle, was enclosed and shaded. One of the first 
improvements was a covered bridge, six hundred feet long, erected in 1805, for 
carriage and foot travel across the Delaware. The public buildings of Easton 
are its court-house, which is built of limestone and stands on a hill in die 



A CENTURY AFTER. 




ALLENTOWN. 



western part of the town; the house and grounds of the Farmers' and Mechanics' 
Institute, where the county fairs are held, and Lafayette College, which Avas 
chartered in 1826, after the visit of Lafayette to America, though the corner-stone 
was not laid till eight years later. Easton proper has few great manufactories, 
but the water-powers of the Bushkill are used by saw-mills, planing-mills, and 
sash-factories, by foundries, tanneries, and paint-works. The scenery in the 
vicinity of Easton is quite picturesque. There is a good background of high 
land, in the shape of Chestnut Hill and Mount Taylor, and from the latter 
there projects an isolated rock, which is thought to resemble an Indian profile, 
and is called, strangely enough, St. Anthony's Nose. If one is in a meditative 
mood, there is a lovely cemetery on the Bushkill, in which he can muse upon 
death, and which contains many monuments, among others, one to George 
Taylor, one of the Signers, who died hereabout during the Revolution, and 
sleeps somewhere in an unknown grave. 

At Allentown, seventeen miles west of Easton, at the junction of the Lehigh 
with the Little Lehigh and Jordan creek, we have fairly commenced our journey 
up the Lehigh valley. The name of the town was, of course, derived from a 
person, but whether he was James Allen, by whom it was laid out in 1762, or 
his father, William Allen, a citizen of Philadelphia, and for many years chief 
justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania,, a friend of the Penn family, from 



PHILADELPHIA TO SCRANTON. 




MAUCH CHUNK. 



whom he inherited large tracts of land, is uncertain. It was used as a place of 
concealment during the Revolution, when it was known as Northampton, and 
among the valuables which found their way- here from Philadelphia was the 
chime of Christ Church. The name of Northampton clung to the town until 
1838, twelve years after its incorporation, though the name of Allentown was 
applied to it in the town records in 1800. Its growth, which was long retarded 



314 A CENTURY AFTER. 

by the difficulty of obtaining a necessary supply of water, was, at last, assured by 
the completion of the Lehigh Valley and East Pennsylvania Railroads. It is 
built upon an eminence, which slopes gradually to the Lehigh on the east and to 
Jordan creek on the north. You cross the former by an iron bridge and the 
latter by a stone one, which is thought to be the largest structure of the sort in 
Pennsylvania, being about eighteen hundred feet in length. The city is regularly 
laid out in broad, well-shaded streets. Most of the business is transacted in the 
centre, which is a large square. The chief industries of AUentown (which was 
incorporated as a city nine years ago) are in iron, — the AUentown Iron-works, 
employing six hundred men and using in its five furnaces over a thousand tons 
a week, and the AUentown Rolling-mill Company, also employing six hundred 
men and using almost exclusively the pig iron made in its own furnaces, to the 
extent of twenty thousand tons a year. This last company can use upwards of 
sixty thousand tons of iron a year, in the manufacture of rails, bar iron, bolts 
and nuts, steel rails, engines, and other machinery. There are various other 
industries here, — rolling-mills, foundries, machine-shops, spike-works, brass-works, 
woolen-mills, planing-mills, carriage and wagon factories, mowing-machine works, 
sash-factories, and the like, not forgetting tlie fire-brick works, which produce 
about two millions of bricks a year. The public buildings are three national 
banks, several savings-banks, three large school-houses of sandstone and brick, 
the AUentown Female College, which stands in the north-eastern portion of this 
busding litde city, and Muhlenberg College, which stands in the south-eastern 
portion, in its own grounds, fronting a beautiful, shady lawn. There are, besides, 
sixteen churches, an opera-house, and sundry Odd-Fellows' and Masonic halls, and 
many fine residences, — elegant mansions, surrounded by gardens and fruit-trees. 
We stumble upon Indian names, as of Catasauqua, which is three miles 
above AUentown, and stands upon a creek of the same name, the aboriginal 
meaning of which is parcJied land, and at Hokendauqua, which also stands upon 
a creek so called, and which signifies searching for land. We pass great iron 
and car works at these places, and at Rockdale and Slatington we see what 
their names would lead us to expect. There are seven or eight large quarries 
at the latter town, which employ upwards of a thousand hands. Two miles 
further on we come to the gap where the Lehigh forces its way through 
the Kittatinny mountains, and where we long to linger in the midst of its 
magnificent scenery. We climb, in thought, up the craggy cliffs, and look out 
along the mountain sides, and down into the valleys and woodlands and 
farms, — a panorama of beauty and grandeur. There is a lofty ridge on the 



PHILADELPHIA TO SCRANTON. 




western side of the ' 

gap, near the summit 

of which rises from 

the encirdinsf woods 

a sohtary pile of rocks, which is 

called the "Devil's Pulpit." 

We have passed Parryville, and 
have reached Lehifrhton, where we 
should like to stop and gossip a 
bit. The first settlement in Carbon 
county was made near Lehighton, 
in 1746, by Moravian missionaries, — 
probably at the instigation of Count 

Zinzendorf, — and was known as Gnadenhiitten. It seems, from one account, 
to have been a prosperous mission, the Indian congregation alone numbering 
five hundred souls, who were preached to out of doors, and David Brainerd, the 
young Connecticut enthusiast, is said to have labored here, but on looking into 
his life we are led to doubt his success in this field. It does not matter much 
now, perhaps, for it was a hundred and thirty years ago; still, one wishes to 



WYOMING VALLEY AND WILKESBARRE. 



3i6 A CENTURY AFTER. 

know the truth, even in trifles. The settlement was finally removed to the 
eastern bank of the river, on the site of the present Weissport, and was called 
New Gnadenhiitten. We should like to gossip about this, and to visit the 
"Spring of Healing Waters," and imbibe a salutary draught, but we must on 
through Packerton, which is a perfect net-work of railroad tracks, is populous 
with railroad men, and is crowded with coal trains, — on, two miles further, to 
Mauch Chunk. The history of Mauch Chunk (which, by the way, is the Indian 
name for Bear mountain) is little else than a history of its coal, which was 
discovered here, on the summit of Sharp mountain, in 1791, by a hunter named 
Philip Ginter, who made his treasure-trove known to Colonel Jacob Weiss, who 
lived two miles below in what is now Weissport. Colonel Weiss took a sample 
of it to Philadelphia, where a number of persons believed in it, and started a 
Lehigh Coal-Mine Company. They proceeded to open the mines, taking up 
eight or ten thousand acres of unlocated land, including Sharp mountain, but 
met with such indifferent success for twenty years that they leased the mines to 
different parties, who abandoned them in 181 5. The Philadelphian of sixty years 
ago could not be made to see the value of Mauch Chunk coal ; he said it put 
out the fire. Even his journeymen could scarcely be bribed into trying it. Three 
years later another Lehigh Coal Company and the Lehigh Navigation Company 
were formed, and Avere the foundation of the existing- Lehigh Coal and 
Navigation Company. The improvement of the Lehigh river the same year 
opened its navigation for the transportation of coal, and settled the destiny of 
Mauch Chunk. If anything could exceed the hardness of this twenty-six years 
coal struggle, it is the coal itself which is the hardest anthracite known in the 
world. It lies in a bed upon the top of Mauch Chunk mountain, fifty-three feet 
in depth, which exceeds the thickness of any layer yet discovered. Mauch 
Chunk is built at the junction of a creek of the same name and the Lehigh 
river, and has no room to enlarge itself, except by excavating the steep, 
precipitous rocks with which the gorge is lined. About two hundred feet 
above it there is a level, several hundred acres in extent, where Upper Mauch 
Chunk stands, crowded against the hillsides, with its gardens and outhouses 
perched above its roofs, and looking down upon its one street, which is 
crowded with pleasure-seekers in the holiday seasons of nature. Back of this 
populous little eyrie rises Mount Pisgah, the starting-point of the Switchback 
Railroad, which ascends to the summit, a distance of over twentj'-three hundred 
feet, at an angle of twenty degrees. The view from the summit of Mount 
Pisgah is bewildering in its sublimity. TJie eye takes in at a glance a series 




IN THK WOOUS NKAK WII.KILSBARRE. 



3i8 A CENTURY AFTER. 

of mountain ranges sweeping from the Lehigh Gap, eleven miles below, to 
Schooley's Mountain, sixty-odd miles away, in New Jersey; the intervening 
space being dotted with towns and villages. Below are Upper Mauch Chunk, 
Mauch Chunk, and East Mauch Chunk, alive with steam-cars and canal-boats 
and bright with the sparkling of the Lehigh river. Fifty years ago we could 
not have scaled Mount Pisgah as we can to-day, for there was no track, the 
coal being forwarded from the mines by wagons, and there were, it is said, 
only two tracks laid anywhere in the United States, — one from Baltimore to 
Ellicott's Mills and the other at Ouincy, Massachusetts. This was in 1826. 
The Switchback Railroad was built and in operation the next year, and has ever 
since performed its tasks of colliery. The empty cars ascend the mountain by 
means of an inclined plane with a stationary engine at the top, and then 
descend, by their own weight, over a downward grade to Summit Hill, and 
thence to the mines in the valleys, whence, when loaded, they are lifted by 
other inclined planes to the summit, and run by their own gravity to the river, 
where they are discharged into boats. A tunnel has lately been driven through 
the Nesquehoning mountain from the Panther Creek valley, whereby the coal is 
sent direct to Mauch Chunk. This preserves the Switchback road for passenger 
travel, and magnificent travel It is, too, — the ride of nine miles through the 
woods from Summit Hill to Mauch Chunk being made in nine minutes. The 
"Switzerland of America," as Mauch Chunk is not inaptly called, abounds in 
wild and picturesque scenery. Whatever the traveler misses he should not miss 
Glen Onoko, a magnificent freak of nature, in the shape of a great pass, with 
an ascent of nearly a thousand feet, rocky, precipitous, wooded, — the fissure, so 
to speak, through which flows and tumbles and falls a little limpid stream, 
broken into numberless rapids and cascades, until it empties, at last, into the 
Lehigh. 

O 

In travelino- from Mauch Chunk to White Haven and Wilkesbarre one feels 
the poverty of language, if he attempts to describe and characterize the scenery 
through which he is passing. He is in the midst of the most rugged and 
irregular mountain region in Pennsylvania, following the course of a river whose 
waters are dyed almost black with the sap of hemlocks, and which appears 
in some places to have no outlet; the hills, which sink sheer down to the water's 
edge, are cloven ,in gorges, through which pour tributary creeks, broken here 
and there into waterfalls, and shadowed with the tall trunks of leafless pines. 
The great freshet of 1862 has left terrible traces of its fury all the way to 
White Haven, — strewn with the ruins of locks, dams, and banks, the relics of the 



PHILADELPHIA TO SCRANTON. 




SCRANTON. 



upper division of the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company, which has never 
been rebuilt. Past Stony creek, the home of speckled trout, and Tannery, widi 
its hides and saw-mills, to White Haven, where we see a wilderness of rafts and 
logs, and where ten mills employ about two hundred hands, who produce 
annually about thirty millions of feet of lumber. We have reached Newport, 
which is five miles in a direct line from Wilkesbarre, but at least sixteen by 
rail. Here we have our first glimpse of tlie Wyoming valley, and are in the 
midst of historj^ One tragic leaf thereof has been set to music, and has 
immortalized the settlers of Wyoming. When the Revolution broke out they 
sent the flower of their male population into the Continental army, leaving their 
valley defenseless, — for those who remained were too old or too young to fight, 
were without artillery, almost without fire-arms, their only strongholds being the 
slight stockades which they called forts. To capture these and destroy the 
village, Colonel John Buder organized, in 1778, at Niagara, an expedition of 
about eight hundred British regulars, Tories, and Indians. They reached the 
neighborhood of Wyoming on the 2d of July and camped at Fort Wintermoot. 
The Wyoming militia, consisting of about three hundred and fifty men and boys, 
gathered at Fort Fort)', midway between the village and the enemy, whom they 



320 A CENTURY AFTER. 

resolved to attack. They marched up the river the next day, led by Colonel 
Zebulon Butler, who was not equal to the task which devolved upon him. His 
men began to fire as they drew near the woods in which the invaders were 
concealed, and were within a hundred yards of the ambush when the Indians, 
assisted by the British regulars, attacked them in return. Here the historians 
differ, some saying that Colonel Dennison ordered his men to fall back to gain 
a better position, which brought on a panic, and others, who do not mention 
this circumstance, saying, in substance, that the Indians gave no quarter, but 
took two hundred and fifty scalps in less than half an hour. The prisoners 
were terribly tortured, especially by an old Indian half-breed, named Queen 
Esther, who had some twenty of them ranged near a stone on the river bank, 
and held there while she walked around them singing their death-song and 
clubbing them till they died. A few escaped to the mountains, other few swam 
the river to Wilkesbarre Fort. The next day Fort Forty capitulated and its 
occupants were butchered. The following day Wilkesbarre was surrendered and 
burned. 

The scenery through which we have been traveling is magnificent. We 
have gone curving about the mountains, losing sight of the Wyoming valley 
only to see it again as we emerged from the depths of the Lehigh valley, until 
we found ourselves on the summit of Wilkesbarre mountain, skirting along the 
edge of the precipice. We have seen mountain-tops and valleys stretching 
away miles in the misty distance, as we saw them at Allegrippus, where the 
mountains rose and the valleys sank, as we ascended their rocky sides. What 
words will not belittle the greatness of nature here? 

The history of Wilkesbarre is connected with that of Wyoming, as we have 
seen. It was named after two English friends of the colonists, John Wilkes and 
Isaac Barre, and is the oldest town in Luzerne county. It was twice burned, 
the second time in 1784, by the Pennamites, who left only three houses standing. 
It rose from its ashes, however, and built its nest, where it hatched, as before. 
Speaking ornithologically, the eggs of the vara avis coal were plentiful hereabout 
(as where are they not in Pennsylvania?), for four years before Wilkesbarre 
was laid out they were discovered at Ross hill, in the manor of Sunbury, 
opposite the town. This was twenty-three years before the find of anthracite 
on Sharp mountain, at Mauch Chunk, but it was no more successful here than 
there, for forty years elapsed before Judge Fell satisfied his friends that 
" stone-coal " made a clearer and better fire, at less expense, than burning wood 
in the common way, and grates began to come in use in the Lehigh valley. 



PHILADELPHIA TO SCRANTON. 



321 



There are now in active operation, at and near Wilkesbarre, eight collieries and 
coal companies, employing between twelve and thirteen thousand men and boys, 
and producing annually about five millions of tons. There are also larore 
iron-works, a wire-rope mill, saw and planing mills, and similar industries. 
The woods in the neighborhood, as in most of the mountain districts of 
Pennsylvania, abound in game, and trout are numerous in the creeks that pour 
into the Susquehanna. 

A run of twenty miles or so brings us to Scranton, which resembles 
Wilkesbarre in its general features, though it is much more modern in its 
aspect, — a busy little city, which is perpetually sending up columns of white 
steam from its mills and factories. Its growth has been more rapid than that 
of Wilkesbarre, which is voted a less enterprising town. It lies on the east 
bank of the Lackawanna and is the centre of the great Lackawanna coal 
region. Its natural situation is beautiful. The river winds pleasantly along its 
edge, which was left shaded with trees, and the mountains, with which it is 
hemmed in, are less precipitous than those we encountered below. We close 
at Scranton the railroad journeys which have borne us into the heart of the 
State, and as we return to Philadelphia, we shall do well to recall what we 
have seen,— coal-beds and iron-mines, a world of inland industries, which is the 
source of Pennsylvania's greatness. 




FAIRMOUNT PARK. 




ZOOLOGICAL GARDEN. 



WHEN John Penn, grandson of the Founder and whilom governor of 
Pennsylvania, built himself a little manor-house on the west bank of the 
Schuylkill, it must have been a lonely place, or he would not have christened 
it "Solitude." There were stately forest trees about it, in whose shadows he 



FAIRMOUNT PARK. 



323 



walked, and near it, at the Sweet-brier Mansion, dwelt a noble neighbor, in the 
person of Baron Warner, to whom the Waltonians of the period paid a yearly 
tribute of three sun-perch fish. The river was populous with finny tribes, the 
forest abounded in game, and the air was vocal with the songs of birds. The 
woods, the waters, the sky — triple kingdoms of nature — were before and around 
and above John Penn at "Solitude." They are here to-day, but with a difference. 
The woods for the most part are felled; the light canoe of the Indian has given 
place to strange craft that are paddled along with wheels, and the warble of 
birds is drowned by the whisde and scream of engines. What would John 
Penn think of the change if he could revisit his old home by glimpses of 
the moon? And what would he say when he saw that his home was a 
snake-house? What did your Excellency mutter? "A generation of vipers?" 
Not a whit, man ; you merely behold a department of our Zoological Garden. 
Look around you. Just back of "Solitude" there is a litde villa inhabited by 
Siiniadce, CebidcB, and Leinuridce, and near that a Carnivora House. If it be 
a Thursday, lions, tigers, hyenas, and other gentle creatures vociferate their 
hunger savagely. The four quarters of the globe are represented in this unique 
garden, where, within a moderate stroll, we are brought face to face with 
the beautiful, the terrible, and the grotesque. Lovers of beaut}^ linger at the 
Aviary; lovers of terror haunt the Carnivora House; and lovers of oddity and 
fun go from the Monkey House to the Prairie-Dog Village and the Bear-Pits. 
Can it be possible that we are descended from the Simiadce? We refuse to 
believe it of ourselves, though we are willing to admit that Darwin is, if he 
insists upon it. He certainly has a monkey face. They are amusing for a 
time, these hairy caricatures of humanity; but for downright fun we prefer bears, 
whether they mimic us by walking on their hind legs and holding out their paws 




324 



A CENl'URY AFTER. 



for the largess we toss down to them, apples, nuts, and the like, or whether 
they walk about on all fours, like the beasts they are. We love to see the 
black and cinnamon bears climb their poles, and box each other around the 
corners of the branches, — forest pugilists, dealing each other love pats, just 
to keep their hands in ; but we fight shy of the grizzly, who is as surly 
and morose as the great Ursa Major, Dr. Samuel Johnson. From a poet to 
a reporter, nothing would come amiss to him. We should not like to be his 




W.\TERING HORSES — LANSDOWNE DRIVE. 



Boswell; for to eat with him would be to furnish the meal ourselves. The 
nominal foundation of the Zoological Society dates back to 1859, when a code 
of laws was adopted for its use. Attempts were subsequently made to raise 
funds, but they amounted to nothing, and the society was practically defunct 
until March, 1872, when its members reorganized. They placed themselves 
in communication with the Park Commissioners, who gave them ground in the 
East Park, above Girard Avenue Bridge, but it was not accepted, and the 
present site was secured. The garden was opened to the public on the 1st 
of July, 1874, and from that day to the ist of March, 1875, a period of eight 
months, the number of admissions was over a quarter of a million, which largely 
exceeded the whole number of admissions for any year, except two, to the 



FAIR MOUNT PARK. 325 

London Zoological Society during the first twenty-two years of its existence, 
and in a city with a population of from one and a half to two millions. The 
greatest number of visitors here in any single day was on the 5th of July, 1875, 
when eleven thousand two hundred and forty-five were admitted; the greatest 
number of monthly visitors was in August of the same year, when over sixty-four 
thousand were admitted, the receipts being over thirteen thousand dollars. The 
number of visitors from March ist, 1875, to March ist, 1876, was about lour 
hundred and twenty thousand, the receipts being nearly ninety thousand dollars. 
As with visitors and receipts, so with the population of the Zoological Garden, 
which has steadily increased with its growth. It consisted, in 1874, of one 
hundred and thirty-one quadrupeds, six hundred and sixty-four birds, and eight 
reptiles; it consisted, on the ist of March, 1876, of three hundred and forty-two 
quadrupeds, four hundred and eighty-five birds, seventy-four reptiles, and eighteen 
fish. The total value of the present occupants of the Garden is over fifty 
thousand dollars. It requires an expert to determine values in stock of this 
nature, for no layman can tell us why a Bengal tiger is worth fifteen hundred 
dollars and seven African lions are worth only three thousand; why a black 
leopard is worth eight hundred dollars and five leopards only three hundred; 
why four Bactrian camels are worth only three hundred dollars and a Javanese 
swine two hundred; why the grizzly is worth two hundred and fifty dollars and 
eight black bears only forty; why a rhinoceros is worth five thousand dollars, 
an elephant thirty-five hundred, a cassowary two hundred dollars, and forty 
monkeys only twenty-five dollars. The mortality of zoological stock is large, 
but less here, it is believed, than elsewhere. About one-half the deaths are 
in the ornithological department, and among animals of the lowest order of 
intellect or instinct; the bills of mortality are larger among monkeys than 
among bears and foxes. The increase of membership in the Zoological Society 
is encouraging. There were, for e.xample, five hundred and seven annual 
members on March ist, 1874, and seven hundred and two annual members 
on March ist, 1875. The accommodations erected by the Society within the 
last two or three years have added greatly to the value of the Garden and 
the enjoyment of its visitors. It contains upwards of twenty different structures, 
the most important being the Carnivora House, which cost about fifty thousand 
dollars. The minor improvements are enclosures and houses for bear-cubs 
and raccoons, a skating-house, an elegant aviary, pens for foxes and wolves, 
deer-paddocks, buffalo houses and pens, dams and a swan-pond, a lake for 
aquatic fowl and skating, and (since the hosts of the Zoological Garden are 



A CENTURY AFTER. 



fed, why not their guests?) an excellent restaurant 
between the houses of the simiadce and the car- 
nivora. One hardly looks for picturesqueness in a 
zoological garden, but he finds it here, 
nevertheless, in the Elephant House — a 
substantial building of red brick, with black 
joints, and drab stone trimmings — and in 
the rustic bridge, the deer houses and 
paddocks, and the houses for the llamas 
and dromedaries. Just above "Solitude" 
there is a majestic row of beeches, — the 
northern boundary, it would seem, of a 
broad avenue, which once ran down 
to the river and of which it 
lb the only remnant. Great 
trees are here, as in the East 
Park, especially along Lans- 
downe drive, which we are 
' on, and along the sides of 
Lansdowne Glen, a roman- 
tic ravine, which rises 
in the hiorh crround of 
the West Park and 
winds down 
crookedly 




LANSDOW.VE GLE.\. 



FAIRMOUNT PARK. 



327 



to the river. We come to a venerable chestnut before reachine the new brido-e 
across Lansdowne Glen, — a patriarch among its fellows, which are scattered 
about the Park. Our school-children were allowed the run of them a few years 
since, a day being set apart for nutting; but of late the custom has been 
discontinued, and not too soon, if we may judge from the old chestnut before us. 
It was right and proper to carry away the nuts, my little masters, particularly 




BRIDGE OVER LANSDOWNE GLEN. 



when you had permission; but when it came to carrying away the trees that 
bore them, root and branch, you overreached yourselves. 

Speaking of trees reminds us that there are some magnificent pines which 
we shall see in our rambles hereabout. There were originally twelve of these 
forest apostles, but half of them are gone, and five of the rest form a pillared 
pentagon, near which stands the sixth like a sentry — a grim, old grenadier — 
guarding the approach to this rustic summer-house. To be seen at its best, 



328 A CENTURY AFTER. 

Lansdowne drive should be seen of an afternoon, when it is alive with carriages 
of every description. It leads into other drives and roads where similar 
streams of life pursue their way up and down and across each other, — miles of 
manly strength and womanly beauty, leagues of health and happiness. The 
Centennial deflects them a little from their accustomed course, and compels 
them to skirt around the grounds towards the river. Fairmount is rich in 
ravines, but if we were called upon to decide between those of the East Park 
and those of the West Park, — between the great ravines south of Edgeley, say, 
and Lansdowne Glen, — we should hesitate in arriving at a decision. As compared 
with the former, the latter is perhaps less wild. Less picturesque it certainly is 
not. The hand of man is more discernible here than in the east ravine, in the 
shape of winding walks, bridges where they are needed, stairs, and steps up and 
down the terraced heights, — the something, in short, which separates scenery 
which is cared for from that which is left to itself, — in other words, training and 
cultivation. A little stream meanders along its winding depths, sparkling and 
darkling as it goes murmuring along to the Schuylkill. If the spirit of John 
Penn would be surprised, as we have supposed, could it revisit his old 
manor-house at "Solitude," the old-time owners and occupants of the Lansdowne 
estate, which extended from Sweet-brier to George's Hill and Belmont, would 
never recognize their grounds. They would look in vain for their mansion and 
the broad carriage-drive which led to it through the great gateway, and for the 
conservatories, vases, fountains, and formal garden-walks bordered with box. 
They would look in vain for the encampments of the British, — the white tents, 
the red coats, and the royal cross of St. George. They would find nothing that 
they remembered, — for the mansion was destroyed one noisy day in July, when 
the boys of Philadelphia were celebrating the Declaration of Independence 
around its walls with fire-works. They might remember the British, however, 
though not as they saw them here ninety-nine years ago, for at the upper end 
of Lansdowne there are three British buildings, whose Elizabethan architecture 
distinguishes them from the edifices which surround them. But what city is this 
before us? they ask: whereat we smile, and, perhaps, chaff these elderly 
personages for not reading the newspapers of to-day. City, quotha! It is 
just a collection of buildings, which has been run up to celebrate the one 
hundredth anniversary of American independence. The largest of them is about 
a third of a mile long. No more. If you are really so ignorant of modern 
history, venerable shadows in knee-buckles, you had better take the horse-cars 
into town, (stage-coaches being abolished,) and read a little about your native 



FA IR M O UN T PARK. 




THE OLD CHESTNUT. 



land. The Philadelphia Library (which was started by Mr. Benjamin Franklin 
before you were born) will enlighten you as to what has taken place since your 
lamented departure from Lansdow^ne. You shake your ancient queues, and 
decline. Vanish then in your stately mausoleums, for clearly you are not at 
home at present. We take leave of the Past here on Lansdowne drive, in 
sight of the Centennial Buildings, and we take leave of the Penn family in their 
public capacity of proprietaries of Pennsylvania. That they should have held 
with the mother country during the Revolution was to have been expected, and 
they should not be blamed for it. Many good men did the same. That 
England should have rewarded them by an annuity for the loss of their 
estate, — which is said to have been the largest ever sequestrated in civil 
war, amounting to ten millions of pounds sterling, — was just; and that they 
were not divested of their private estates, by the revolting colonies and the 
United States, was just, also. They kept their manors and what not, and their 



330 



A CENTURY AFTER. 



descendants keep them still. "Solitude" and Lansdowne were purchased from 
them by the city authorities, and preserved for the Zoological Garden and the 
Centennial City. 

We continue along the Lansdowne drive and reach the southern entrance 
to the steamboat-landing. Proceeding thitherward, we cross a charming little 
bridge, which is placidly mirrored in the canal, and pass the works which pump 
the water into the reservoir on George's Hill. We keep the river road until 
we come to Belmont valley, where we begin to ascend, — skirting around the 
Belmont Mansion, — until we are in the neighborhood of George's Hill. We have 
silendy noted many delectable places as we passed, — glimpses of Lansdowne 
Glen, its wooded hollows and winding stream; and glimpses of Belmont valley, 
lesser, but lovelier, — romantic recesses, rural retreats; but we have not lingered 
among them as we might have done at an earlier period, for we could not 
escape the sight of the public buildings which have risen like exhalations along 
our way. We cross Belmont avenue and clamber up the green slopes of 
George's Hill until we reach the reservoir, and look down upon its millions 
of gallons of water, — an inland lake, over two hundred feet above the river 
level. It lies unruffled just below us, pent up in its great chamber of brick. If 
the fountain is playing, — a pretty little fountain in the centre of four square 
bases capped with floral urns, — the water builds up its greater and lesser dome 
of spray and runs softly out of its overflowing basin. What can compare with 
the sparkling bowl before us, brimming with nature's wine, — pure, translucent, 
cool, — as healthful as the wind and the sun? 

There are many ways of perpetuating our names, but no better way than 
in giving enjoyment to our fellows. One man endows a college, a hospital, 
another a great library, a third a public park. We are not always anxious 
for academic degrees, nor do we wish to put ourselves in the hands of the 
doctors; there combes a time when the sight of books is tiresome, but never 
the time when nature is not delightful. Great parks, like Fairmount, are the 
pleasure-grounds of thousands, and additions to them are benefactions to the 
race. Such a benefaction is George's Hill, which will preserve the memory of 
Jesse and Rebecca George to future generations. 

It was a noble gift we see as we stand upon its summit, breathing the 
fresh air, and looking upon the magnificent panorama before us. From Port 
Richmond to West Philadelphia we have an uninterrupted view of the city 
massed in the distance, and on the line of the southern horizon a glimpse of 
the Delaware, dotted with the white sails of vessels and the black smoke of 



FA IR M UN T FAR K. 



::%M^ 




BELMONT LANDING. 



Steamers going to and coming from the ocean. Just above the horizon we 
distinguish the shores of New Jersey and the pines on the heights of Red 
Bank. We might separate the masses of buildings and map out the cit)' by 
its domes and spires and pubHc edifices, but it is better to take in their effect 
as a whole. We shall see them plainer at Belmont. In the meantime let us 
sit awhile in the pavilion and enjoy our picturesque surroundings, — the carriages 
sweeping around the concourse; the flower-beds spread like mats on the green 
carpet; the flag waving above the fountain in which the brook of the Georges 
leaps out into the light, and the sloping hill widening into pleasant reaches of 
grass and woodlands. 



332 ■ A CENTURY AFTER. 

We shall have many distinguished guests in Fairmount Park during the 
summer, — diplomatists, statesmen, noblemen, and one or more royal highnesses, — 
but none more distinguished than those who used to be guests at a mansion 
to which we are now strolling. Belmont drive — supposing it existed in the 
days we have in mind — was as famous as the street that led to the little 
theatre in which Talma played to a pit-full of kings. They were not kings, 
however, who visited this old mansion, though one of them had been a king, 
and they probably reached it by a river-road, riding up to its door on horseback 
or in stately equipages with outriders. We cannot state the exact age of this 
venerable house, but it is certainly more than a hundred and thirty years. The 
main outbuilding was erected in 1745, as a slab let into the wall testifies; but 
the house itself was built before that date, for a boy was born there in the 
previous year, lived his life there, and died there in 1828, at the age of 
eighty-four. Of his father, it is enough to say that he adhered to the Crown 
during the Revolution, like many another gentleman hereabout. Governor Penn, 
for instance, and that he returned to England, where, in loyal dust, his bones 
repose. He had an Uncle Richard, after whom he was probably named, who 
was educated at the University of Pennsylvania, was rector of Christ Church, 
in Philadelphia, for thirteen years, was secretary of the land office under the 
Penns, and secretary to several governors of the colony. It is to be presumed 
that he, too, was loyal; but his loyalty was not for long, for six days after the 
Declaration of Independence was proclaimed he rendered up his earthly account. 
Our hero — a stalwart gentleman of thirty-two — cast in his lot with the revolting 
colonies; like his elder contemporary, Robert Morris, the owner of goodly acres 
on old Vineyard Hill. He was a poet in a small way — that is to say, he wrote 
fluent verses, which were handed round in manuscript and sung, and which, 
finally, got into print. There is extant a song of his on that historic tree, 
the Treaty Elm, — "good Onas' elm," as the Indians called it; but it is not 
invigorating reading now. The same must be said of another of his songs, 
written at a meeting of St. George's Society nearly two years before the 
Revolution, and closely parodying Thomson's hackneyed old anthem about 
Britannia's ruling the waves, and Britons not being slaves, which, by the by, 
this Briton of ours was determined not to be, whatever his father said and 
his uncle preached. The filling of secretaryships seemed to run in the family, 
for he was secretary of the Board of War from 1776 to 1781, when he was 
made a member of Congress. He had a pretty turn for humor of the obvious 
sort, and was kindly considered a wit by his acquaintances. If we bore a 



FAJRMOUNT PARK. 




GEORGE S HILL. 



grudge against the memory of this worthy man we might exhume some of his 
jokes. They would not set the table on a roar to-day, whatever they may have 
done a hundred years ago. It should be said in his favor that he could not 
help making them. He had a grave reputation to sustain, for he was a judge 
of the United States District Court. He was a most pleasant district judge, 
one authority tells us, and was a good admiralty judge, but was much disposed 
to leave the watch on deck, in all weathers, to his sleepless colleagues, putting 
forth now and then for his refreshment some facetics or other, pun, quip, 
crank, or quiddet, for which he was very famous. He published a couple of 
volumes of admiralty decisions for the Pennsylvania districts, covering a period 
of twenty-seven years, which were generally regarded as sound. "I have 
learned much in his school," Judge Story wrote, "and owe him many thanks 
for his rich contributions to the maritime jurisprudence of our country." He 
corresponded, as did also his friend Washington, with that eminent statistician, 
Sir John Sinclair, LL. D. and I\I. P., published many papers in the "Memoirs 
of the Philadelphia Agricultural Society," of which he was president, and 
introduced the use of gypsum into agriculture, printing a pamphlet on that 
subject towards the close of the last century. He might have been comptroller 
of the treasury of the United States, but he preferred to be a judge, which 
he remained until his death. Such, in brief, was Judge Richard Peters, the 



334 



A CENTURY AFTER. 



master of Belmont Mansion, which we have now reached. It is not what it 
was in his day, though it is still a pleasant old place. Its glory, thirty years 
ago, was a magnificent avenue of hemlocks, which extended from the house to 
a road back of Belmont avenue. Upwards of a hundred feet in height and 
draped with masses of English ivy, they were best described by the line of 
Keats, for beyond all their leafy compeers in Fairmount they were, indeed, the 
green-robed senators of the summer woods. A few venerable stragglers remain 
and look down upon us mournfully, majestic in decay. If there were tongues 
in trees, what tales they could tell us of the stately gentlemen and ladies who 
strolled beneath them or in the garden-walks bordered with box and privet! 
The walks are gone, the flower-beds, the vases, and the statues. Much remains 
as it was; the broad hall and small sleeping-rooms, the little window-panes set 
in the heavy sashes, the high, carved, wooden mantel-pieces, and the wide, open 
fireplaces, up which the hospitable fire roared in the olden time; but much is 
changed. The piazza is modern, so is the raised roof and the upper story. 
A portion of the lower end of the house has been torn off and a restaurant 
erected, running thence and backward Hke a long wing. Back of this there is 




FOUNTAIN AT RliSER\'OIR. 



FAIRMOUNT PARK. 335 

a tower-like structure, a Boston "notion," we opine, containing an elevator, 
for the delectation of those who are not satisfied to look about them as Ave do, 
at some two hundred and forty or fifty feet above tide-water, but want a higher 
old time a hundred feet or so above us. 

The friends and neighbors of Judge Peters were the most eminent men of 
the time : to name them is to turn the leaves of history. His positions as 
secretary to the Board of War, member of Congress, and admiralty judge, 
naturally brought him in contact with soldiers and statesmen, and his tastes 
brought him in contact with wits and scholars. Across the Schuylkill, at "The 
Hills," lived his good friend and fellow-patriot, Robert Morris, to whom, as a 
financier, the success of our arms was indebted, and who was an honored guest 
at Belmont. Others were William Bartram, naturalist and ornithologist, who 
had traveled largely in the Southern States, observing the manners of the 
Choctaws and the morals of crows; David Rittenhouse, clock-maker, surveyor, 
mathematician, and astronomer, treasurer of Pennsylvania, and successor of 
Franklin as president of the American Philosophical Society, and director of 
the Mint ; Franklin, staid, sagacious, fresh from Versailles, famous in both 
worlds, president of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania; Thomas Wharton, who 
succeeded John Penn as governor when the colonies revolted; and John Penn 
himself. They were gentlemen then, and political differences counted for little. 
Whigs and Tories respected each other when the struggle was over, and so 
great a man as George Washington was not above visiting old John Penn at 
"Solitude." Other friends and guests of Judge Peters were Baron and General 
von Steuben, officer of the great Frederick, who turned our raw recruits into 
soldiers ; Alexander James Dallas, secretary to the Commonwealth, law}'er, and 
man of letters ; Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, roue, speculator, bishop, emigrant, 
and cynic ; canny Louis Philippe, who could black his own boots ; the Count de 
Survilliers, Joseph Bonaparte, ex-king of Spain, who resided awhile at "Solitude;" 
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, venerable names ; the Marquis de Lafayette, 
soldier in our armies at twenty-one; and — greatest of all — Washington. These 
men, and others of less note, were welcome visitors at Belmont. They rambled 
through its grounds, beneath the shade of its hemlocks, chestnuts, and walnuts ; 
stretched their legs under the hospitable mahogany of their host; talked war, 
politics, history', jested, mayhap, or let the Judge have his jest ; rode to town on 
horseback at night, or slept the sleep of the just in the cosy little dormitories 
above. There were giants on the earth in those days, and these were of them. 
Richard Peters kept an open hou.se for his friends, — a prosperous, merry 



336 



A CENTURY AFTER. 



gentleman. Memories of departed greatness hover in the air at Belmont, 
shadows of stately figures flit along its walks. Foremost among them is the 
man of all time — Washington. "Whenever a morning of leisure permitted that 
great man to drive to Belmont, it was his constant habit to do so : in its 
beautiful gardens, beneath the shadows of the lofty hemlocks, he would sequester 
himself from the world, the cares and torments of business, and enjoy a 
recreative and unceremonious intercourse with the Judge." Sometimes he came 
alone, riding the white horse which bore him in the Revolution, and sometimes 
with attendants. If he came in state it was in a cream-colored coach, drawn by 
six horses, mounted by postilions in tasseled caps, and driven by a dignified 
coachman. No such turnout as his ever rolled up to the door of Belmont. 
A chestnut commemorated one of his visits. He was walking one afternoon, 
the story goes, with Judge Peters, who handed him a Spanish nut, and on his 
suggesting that it should be planted, the Judge ran his cane into the ground 
and made a hole into which his Excellency dropped the nut, which was then 
earthed over. It grew to be a great tree, and was very fruitful; but it is gone 
now, though its descendants are said to survive. There is another historic tree 
here — a white walnut — which was planted by Lafayette on his second visit to 
America, in 1824, a man of sixty-seven, wdiom the nation delighted to honor. 
Six years ago this Centennial summer there was a party of distinguished 
strangers seated in the grounds of Belmont. They were twelve in number, and 
they came all the way from Dakota. Natives of the soil, Indians, they had 




33& 



A CENTURY AFTER. 



been to see the Great Father, and returning home they halted here, of course 
to smoke their cahnnefs, and talk of the good Onas and his Elm. 

From the terrace at Belmont we have a magnificent view of the Park. We 
see the river curving away in the middle distance, the Pennsylvania Railroad 
Connecting Bridge, with Girard Avenue Bridge in the rear, and the city 
spreading below in the far distance. From Girard College, which rises on the 
left, spires and towers stretch along to a noble group of structures composed 
of the Masonic Temple, the dome of St. Peter and St. Paul's, with neighboring 
spires and the rising masses of the new municipal buildings. Immediately in 
front of us is the bridge of trestle-work, which spans the end of Lansdowne 
Glen, and on the right, commencing with Agricultural Hall, we see the dome 
of the Art Gallery and the upper portions of the Main Building. Around us 
are idlers like ourselves, — gentlemen and ladies, — sitting at tables here on the 
terrace, resting their limbs and refreshing the inner man and woman with ices 
and what not that is cooling; others are rambling about, sight-seers, as we have 
been, under the old trees, royal even in their ruggedness, — there are some old 
box trees which we must n'isit before we leave, — and others, lessened to children 
almost, are strolling on the slopes below in the direction of the fence which 
encircles the Centennial Grounds, around which carriages are being driven in 
the bright sunshine. Look where we will we encounter human beings, and we 
know that they are absolutely swarming in and about the great structures which 
are going up so rapidly below. We escape the bustle here, and willingly, for 
we eschew work when we are in the Park, and to us, in our idle mood, the 
Centennial City, which is rising before our eyes, is as wonderful as the Temple 
which was builded for Solomon without the sound of a workman's hammer! 




THE CENTENNIAL. 



WHEN the first centurj' of the independence of America was in its last 
decade it was felt by many that its full completion should be celebrated 
as a day of national importance. The sentiment was as spontaneous as the 
flowering of the century plant at its appointed time. It cannot be said to 
have originated in the mind of any one person, though Professor Campbell, of 
Wabash College, Indiana, is mentioned as the first to urge its adoption upon 
the Hon. Morton McMichael, then mayor of Philadelphia. Where the Centennial 
anniversary should take place, and what form it should take, were not doubtful: 
all agreed that it should be here, and should be an International Exhibition, to 
which the world should be invited. Two years before the close of the last 
century the earliest of these fairs was held in France, which had then, and 
retained for eight years later, enough civic energy to cultivate the arts of peace 
in fairs at home while her armies were overrunning Europe. Thirteen years 
of destruction passed before they were renewed; then she had a succession of 
them at intervals of from two to twelve )'ears, there being nine in all, down to 
that of 1867. They have obtained during the last fifty-si.x years in Holland, 
Prussia, Austria, Bavaria, Russia, England, Ireland, and New York. Their name 
was leeion; their work was sfood. What can be better than for the nations of 
the world to meet in a brotherly way, as they did there, and as they will here? 
We need not follow out the red tape which led to the Centennial. There was 
no more of it than was needed in order to reach the necessary action of our 
municipal, State, and national legislatures; to introduce and endorse resolutions; 
to appoint committees to meet and consult with other committees; to appoint 
commissioners; create a board of finance to raise funds, and all the rest of it. 
We are familiar with this, especially the raising of funds, the share contributed 
by Philadclphians and Pennsylvanians amounting to over five millions of the six 
millions and seven hundred and odd thousands of dollars of the estimated cost 
of the Centennial Buildings. The cost of these exhibitions has largely increased 
since the World's Fair, so called, was held in London twenty-five years ago, and 
which demanded an ouday of less than a million and a half of dollars. The New 
York Crystal Palace cost the trifle of half a million, the two Paris Expositions 



BE:!iil|i|HV»'i" 



hjl*!"'!.. 



! fi^Sl: 



m, 



I'-fl 






I'.:'' 







ill: ;, 




THE CENTENNIAL. 341 

one four and the other nearly five millions, and the Vienna Exposition nearly ten 
millions. The area of ground covered has also been steadily added to, the two 
London Fairs covering twenty and twenty-four acres, the two Paris Expositions 
thirty and forty acres, and the great New York Palace less than six acres. 
There are seventy-five acres under cover in the Centennial Grounds. It is the 
opinion of those who have seen all the great fairs of the world during the last 
twenty )'ears, that the natural surroundings of none were equal to what we have 
here at the gateway — for it is no more — of Fairmount. We will claim nothing 
for the city below and opposite. It certainly lacks the antiquity and historic 
interest of Paris and London, the picturesqueness, or what you will, of Vienna, 
Munich, Moscow, and Amsterdam; but it is not entirely without picturesqueness 
of a primitive sort, and a genuine, though not remote, historic interest attaches 
to its sylvan people. W^hat was it that the grand son of New Hampshire and 
great expounder of the Constitution said in a convivial moment at a public 
celebration, — that Greece and Rome, in their palmy days, never had such a 
waterfall as that at Syracuse, which is seventy feet high? Let us remember this, 
and check, if not our pardonable pride in our city and Park and Centennial 
Grounds, any — the least — expression of fancied superiority to the humblest of 
our visitors. 

Not to be bewildered in the maze of avenues, drives, and buildings, we 
must start somewhere and see something. We will commence at the west 
entrance to Fountain avenue and take our way along Elm avenue until we come 
to the space that separates Machiner}^ Hall from the Main Exhibition Building. 
It requires a cool head to keep cool at what we see now, and a sharp eye to 
save ourselves from being pushed and jostled about and possibly knocked down 
by carriages, coaches, wagons, carts, horse-cars, horsemen, and footmen, — the great 
crowd of a holiday city. The view of the Main Building, as it goes away clown 
Elm avenue, lessening in perspective until it reaches the last of its eighteen 
hundred and eighty feet of length, is magnificent. It is not quite so impressive 
as it might be, on account of our nearness to it. It would be more impressive 
from George's Hill, where its extent and symmetry are strikingly apparent, but, 
unfortunately, it can only be seen at an angle there. The eye takes it in here 
with difficulty, for, what with its extreme length, its breadth, which is nearly a 
quarter of its length, the succession of the towers at the corners, the seeming 
three-storied main entrance, and the simple details of its architecture, it is a 
little confusing. In its general character it resembles the similar structures 
erected twenty-five years ago at Hyde Park and three years ago at Vienna, 



A CENTURY AFTER. 




thous^h it is less ornate 
than the one, less osten- 
tatious than the other, 
and considerably larger 
than either. It has oc- 
cupied about a year in 
construction, and cost in 
round numbers one mil- 
lion six hundred thou- 
sand dollars. While 
dealing with numbers 
we may as well mention 
that it is composed of 
nearly four thousand 
tons of rolled iron, nearly 
two hundred and forty 
thousand square feet of 
glass, and over a mil- 
lion square feet of tin 
roofing. The weight of 
iron in its pillars is over 
two millions of pounds 
and in its roof over five 
millions. 

But a difficulty, 
which must be avoided, 
meets us here at the 
outset. We must not 
allow ourselves to go 
into enumerations and 
details, or we shall never 
get on. The history of 
the Centennial will be 
written when it is done, 
as it has been written 
any and every day since 
April and May, 1875, 



THE CEJSITENNIAL. 343 

when the Main Building, Machinery Hall, and Horticultural Hall were begun; 
it will be written by light pens as it has been written by strong and skillful 
hands, and we cannot well help reading it. We called the grounds a Centennial 
City, what shall we call the interior of the Main Building? It is a palace filled 
with pavilions, — the palace of the New World filled with the pavilions of the 
nations of the Old World, built by themselves up and down its long avenues, 
under the iron net-work of its lofty roof. We cannot overstate the material 
magnificence of this, no matter from what point of view we regard it. All 
should have seen, as we have done, the Main Buildincr in its various staees of 
progress and completion; the laying of its stone foundations, the gradual 
uprising of its hundreds of iron columns, and its mile of iron and glass walls 
and towers and roof; the bustle of the workmen, indoors and out, month after 
month, and later the bustle of the different nationalities in the erection of their 
pavilions, hundreds of carpenters putting up every conceivable building in hot 
haste, hundreds of porters unloading cars and carting and hauling boxes here 
and there and every^where; commissioners from England, France, Germany, 
Norway, Sweden, Spain, Japan, Brazil, — everj'where under the sun, — walking 
about in the clear light, in bright uniforms, amid decorations of scarlet and 
gold; it was an indescribable series of brilliant pictures, a dream of peoples 
and nations and tribes and the arts and industries of the earth. Words cannot 
paint it; song cannot celebrate it; it is incredulous. We must submit to the 
dogma of the old schoolman: — "We believe, because it is impossible." But 
let us stroll about and look about and note what we see. We have come to 
the pavilion of Spain, an emblazoned and elaborate enclosure, with the entrance 
through the grand portal on the main front and long passage-ways running 
right and left. The high, arched portal in the centre and the two side portals 
are finely decorated. The doorways are hung with silk curtains of red and 
yellow, and in a pediment above the main entrance there is a picture which 
commemorates the discovery of America by Spain. Below this are portraits 
of old Spanish worthies and unworthies, — Columbus, Isabella, Cortez, Pizarro, 
De Soto, and others, and over all a display of shields, helmets, and standards 
won in old times from the Moors. Spain has done well here, — better than 
some of the larger and more peaceable powers, and we honor her for it, torn 
as she has so lately been by fratricidal warfare. We shall see other evidences of 
her life in the Centennial Grounds, and other products there of her peaceful arts. 
England and Germany are business-like here, as elsewhere. Their buildings are 
on opposite sides of the central aisle, England on the north and Germany on 



A CENTURY AFTER. 




MEMORIAL HALL OR ART GALLERY. 



the south side, west of the great transept. England, rich in everything, is 
rich in the ceramic arts, in majohca ware, in Worcester ware, and in fine 
examples from the potteries of Staffordshire, the last being in an enclosure, the 
inner walls of which are lined with encaustic tiles. Shall we step in and 
examine the great chimney-piece of carved oak, with mediaeval paintings on a 
gold background, and a little fire-place of pictured tiles? or shall we see how 
the illustrated papers of the English are made? (Which of them, pray, will 
compare with "A Century After"?) We shall do neither, but pass on. The 
pavilions of the Netherlands refute the slander that the Dutch are a heavy 
race, for no more delicate and graceful decorative work than theirs can be 
found in the Main Building. We salute the blue caps of their workmen, who 
have finished their cream-colored and gilded wood-work, have brought out their 
industries and the plans of the dikes and dams by which they resist the inroads 
of the sea. We feel more comfortable standing by their cheerful structure than 
by the funereal, black cases of the English and the French, though the latter 
are somewhat relieved by gilded ornamentation and lettering. The question of 
the use of woods in exhibitions like this opens a wide field for consideration, 



THE CENTENNIAL. 345 

but we must not be led into it. It is to be wished that every foreign nation 
present were represented by the best of its native woods; whether we are well 
represented by our black walnuts is a disputable matter. From the Netherlands 
we walk to Brazil, who is present in the person of her emperor, an independent 
gentleman of business, seated with his staff somewhere within those clustered 
columns and behind those arches, and in the shape of her products and 
industries, which surpass those of any other nationality in South America. 
What lessons, if any, other magnates and commissioners may derive from us, 
Dom Pedro will derive that which is best for the great country he governs 
so wisely. We find one republic here — Switzerland — who is busy behind her 
lace curtains and among her plain iron show-cases filled with elaborate wares 
and toys, — tokens of her ingenuity and evidences of her thrift. There is an air 
of freedom there, — a breath from her rugged mountains; we think of the hardy 
men who defend them, and we seem to hear the joddHng song of her milkmaids 
around her pretty chalet. Austria is not far off, in her blacks and yellows, 
under the shadow of her imperial black eagle, whose talons rend nothing here. 
Yonder are litde Denmark and Norway, and Sweden, in her wooden filagree 
house, leaning upon her great column of porphyry, while her people show what 
they have done and can do. Yonder is the pylon and temple-enclosure of 
Egypt, and there are Chili and Japan. Three Continents pass and repass each 
other in this great Hall of Peace. We cannot begin to give an idea of what 
it contains, and after we have seen it we can bear away only the merest 
fraction of it. In one great department, devoted to minerals and metallurgy, we 
familiarize our sight with minerals, ores, stones, and mineral products, and with 
metallurgic products and mining engineering. In another and greater department, 
devoted to manufactures, we are almost stunned by our surroundings, by the 
glories of ceramic art, potteries, porcelains, and glasses; by the comforts of yarn 
and woven goods, and goods of felt and wool; by the beauty and sheen of 
silks and jewelry; by the glitter of weapons; by the mysteries of medicine and 
surgery; by the usefulness of edge tools and cudery; and last, for we must 
stop somewhere, we are carried away by wheeled vehicles, in which dozens of us 
may ride. In another department, devoted to education and science, we come 
upon the finer side of man's nature, — in educational libraries, in scientific and 
philosophical libraries and instruments, and in works on architecture, geography, 
and the physical, social, and moral conditions of man. The mere enumeration of 
all this is bewildering. We had better escape it, and turn to general literature, 
which we find in the south-east corner of the Main Building, where some of 



A CENTURY AFTER. 




HORTICULTURAL HALL. 



the booksellers of America have 
erected a publishers' pavilion, and 
where we see what our authors and 
"-■ printers and binders have done. The multi- 

tudinous shelves about us groan with books; 
or is it the moan of ill-paid American authors, 
and not-paid British authors, clamorous for inter- 
national copyright? Are we bewildered enough 
yet? or shall we go up in the elevator in the tower and, from the platform, 
have a complete view of the whole interior of the Main Building? No; let us 
go elsewhere, say to Machinery Hall, where we shall be astounded, no doubt; 
but with different things. The new sensation will rest us. 

Let us stroll across the Avenue of the Republic, a litde way down Belmont 
avenue, where we can take in the whole length of the structure. We work 
our way through the crowds with care, and approach the lake, whose waters 
are a cool refreshment to us, and the plash of whose fountain, rising and falling 
in the clear sunshine, is a pleasant sound in our ears. It is an imposing building 
which stretches away before us, lesseninq- in the distance, rising; tier above tier; 
its comers brisding with spires; its great entrances capped with towers; its 



THE CENTENNIAL. 




INTERIOR OF HORTICULTURAL HALL. 



length broken by projections and smaller entrances,— the simplicity of every 
detail adding largely to the nobility of the whole. The eye hardly perceives 
that it is over four hundred feet shorter than the Main Building. "It is more than 
twice the size of the Vienna building," a traveler at our elbow tells us, (it is 
a o-ood thino- to have crossed the seas,) "and finer ever)' way in its architectural 
effect." "We arc happy to hear it, sir, and are happy to have made your 
intelligent acquaintance, even for a moment." We stroll back along Belmont 
avenue, avoiding the surging crowd as well as we can, and find ourselves at 



348 A CENTURY AFTER. 

the main entrance to Machinery Hall. We cast our eyes upon its front, along 
the arches and pillared arches, and tiers of pillars above them, up from the 
base to the spiral corners and square towers, and are impressed with their 
simplicity and beauty. If we had not eschewed enumeration we should be 
tempted to give the dimensions of the two main avenues, the aisle between 
them, and the aisles on either side; the breadth of the promenades in the 
avenues and the transept; the breadth of the transept and its southern 
prolongation, and the eastern and western annexes, the former of which is 
nearly as large as the transept itself, and other architectural statistics which 
force themselves upon us. We meet, as we should, our guests first, — the whole 
eastern front being occupied by foreign peoples, the sole exception being 
Canada, who is before us. North of Canada is France, and adjoining Canada, 
in the north-east corner of the building, is Spain. Back of S^Dain is Sweden, 
and back of Sweden Russia. South of these are Belgium and Great Britain 
and her colonies, who are broadly arranged in the second group of nations, 
stretching across the hall until they reach the southern wall. On our left (we 
are still at the main entrance, remember) is Germany and Austria. All these 
powers fill less than one-fourth of the structure. The rest of the space — ten 
or twelve acres, — the prolongation and the annexes — is peopled by ourselves. 
The first thing to do is to see the tremendous iron heart, whose energies are 
pulsating around us. Our cor coi'dium beat first in the brain of Mr. Corliss, 
who conceived it, shaped it, and set it throbbing on the seventeenth day 
of April of this memorable year. To drop the figure and speak for a 
moment in figures, the great Corliss engine weighs eight hundred tons, and 
has a capacity of fifteen hundred horse-power, which can be increased to 
twenty-five hundred horse-power. It will run in eight miles of harness— 
we mean shafting — and urge on all the lesser enginery of the world on 
exhibition here. Not that it is expected to do so, or need do so, for the 
multitude of iron horses surrounding it, down to the smallest Shetland pony 
among them, will emulate it, and show what they can do. Will the flooring 
support its weight? Certainly; for the polished iron platform on which it stands 
rests upon solid and far-sunken foundations of brick. Poets see sublimity in 
the ocean, the mountains, the everlasting heavens; in the tragic elements of 
passion, madness, fate; we see sublimity in that great fly-wheel, those great 
walking-beams and c^'linders, that crank-shaft, and those connecting-rods and 
piston-rods, — in the magnificent totality of the great Corliss engine. What would 
John Fitch have said to this when he conceived and abandoned the idea of 



THE CENTENNIAL. 




AGRICULTURAL HALL. 



running carriages by steam one April day ninety-one 3'ears ago, or thirteen 
years later, when, despondent and desperate, he swallowed his last dose of 
opium pills, and slept his last sleep in Kentucky? Poor old John Fitch! One 
must be more familiar with machinery than most of us are to classify and 
describe the masses of it here, along every avenue and intersecting avenue and 
aisle, ranging up and down the whole length of the building, across the main 
entrance and the rear, — machinery everywhere, English, German, French, Austrian, 
Spanish, and American, — a city of it and its prodigious activities, making mining, 
chemical, and other tools; tools for working metals, wood, and stone; spinning, 
weaving, and sewing; printing, making books, and working paper; motors and 
power-generators; rolling stock and agricultural implements; aerial, pneumatic, 
and hydraulic, — everything you can think of in machinery and enginery, 
ingenuity, power, and speed, — human intelligence and industry at work for all 
mankind. We walk about as in a dream, confused with the forces which Labor 
has conjured up; spirits which it has let loose upon us, but which it controls 
with its iron hands and commanding voices. We are still more confuseil when 
we look from the interior gallery up to the thousands of feet of intersecting 
rafters and stays, and down upon the wonderful creations below. Shall we stay 
longer or go now, while it is multitudinous in our minds? Suppose we saunter 



350 A CEJMTURY AFTER. 

off elsewhere, pecunious and princely, and purchase a Turkish rug or a Persian 
carpet? We shall never have a better chance, nor a better memento of 
Machinery Hall. It will bring- the Orient to us, and visions of grave-looking, 
long-bearded old pachas, who sit cross-legged on divans, smoking nargilehs, 
drinking coffee, or sipping sherbet. 

We have seen what has been done in Machinery Hall, and the multifarious 
industries in the Main Building; let us turn now to art, horticulture, and 
agriculture. We have passed the Bartholdi Fountain and the Judges' Hall, 
and, sauntering along the Avenue of the Republic, are approaching the Art 
Gallery. It strikes us as being the most beautiful structure in the whole 
Centennial Grounds; symmetrical, massive, imposing, rising from its terraced 
height and overlooking the Schuylkill, which goes sparkling away over a 
hundred feet below. It is worthy of the permanence it is to have, thanks to 
the liberality and public spirit of the city of Philadelphia and the State of 
Pennsylvania. We thread our way through the crowds, ascend the steps up 
the terrace, passing the horses of victory, which we prefer not to notice, 
turning any attention we have to spare upon the front of the Art Gallery and 
the great dome surmounted by the statue of the Country, a colossal woman 
looking down upon us, and the group of statues below her, and the victorious 
eagles on the four corners of her spacious palace. We pass up the short flight 
of steps which lead to the main entrance, and begin with sculpture. This, if 
the painters will allow us to think so, is the highest form of art. We feel here 
what Mrs. Browning failed to express in her "thunders of white silence," and, 
in a lesser degree, what Keats felt when he first saw the Elgin marbles. The 
avenue of sphinxes which led from Luxor to Karnak was barbaric to what we 
see here, where the sculptors of Europe compete with our sculptors in their 
noble art. Is America inferior to Europe in sculpture? The judges must decide 
that; we merely decide for ourselves that she is not. We walk through this 
avenue of statuary, passing from shape to shape. Can we retain what we 
receive and reproduce it in words? We cannot, and shall not attempt to. We 
enjoy the symmetry and grace and beauty of the forms and faces before us; 
"the rest is silence." It is impressive, but it is becoming oppressive; it draws 
upon too many moods and nerves. We can come back to it when we have 
rested our minds and refreshed our eyes. Everything that can be called 
art is here, — color in oil and in water, on porcelain, enamel, and metal; 
decoration on pottery and glass; mosaic and inlaid work; engraving and 
lithography; architectural designs and models, — there is no end of artistry in 



2 HE CENTENNIAL. 




UNITED STATES BUILDING. 



the Memorial Hall. It is the same with the extension hall, where many of the 
best works are. Never before were Europe and America so largely represented 
in friendly rivalry. The best art of modern Europe is here; if the best art of 
America is not here it is not because committees have not selected from the 
art societies of the Continent. It is safe to say that the pictures of no American 
painter, living or dead, that are worthy of being seen, are absent, from the great 
canvases it is the custom to cover now down to the delicate little miniatures 
of Malbone. We shall see them all in time, and what England has sent, — the 
achievements of her Royal Academy, and some of the Queen's paintings; what 
France, imperial in art, has sent, and what Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, 
Italy, and Spain have sent. We can compare our artists with theirs, as theirs 
do, when they condescend to, and judge, every man of us for himself, what 
America has accomplished. We are sure of her in landscape and in sculpture. 
If Rome was not built in a day, she was built. If America has not attained 
the hio-hcst eminence in art she will attain it. With this cud for the critics to 
chew, we proceed to Horticultural Hall. 



352 



A CENTURY AFTER. 



If we said the Art Gallery was the most beautiful building in the Centennial 
Grounds, we must tor the moment have forgotten Horticultural Hall. It stands, 
as we see, upon the plateau between Belmont valley and Lansdowne Glen 
(hark, the band is playing in the glen ! ) and commands a wide view of the 
Park. Approach it from whatever direction we will, it is a marvel ot beauty. 
The architecture is Moresque, light, elegant, charming; not so fantastic as most 
Alhambra structures, but substantial, and, in a certain sense, imposing. The 
main entrance, with its porch of arches crowned with a low dome, the front 
broken by a projection behind the porch, from the roof of which rise two 
flag-staffs flying the blue Centennial pennons, is strikingly picturesque. The 
side view of the building, with its central entrances flanked by the arch-roof of 
the conservatories, — the pillared and arched projection behind the entrance, and, 
beyond and above all, the long, arched, lantern roof — is magnificent. Not less 
so the grounds which surround us, and which contain all out-door pageants 
of horticulture and arboriculture ; great parterres that illustrate all methods of 
ornamental gardening, and are filled with flowers and the light of fountains ; a 
forestry of ornamental trees, natives to the land, and choice and cosdy plants 
brought from distant quarters of the world, — Japan, China, and the like, and from 
England, France, Germany, Brazil, Cuba, Mexico ; and promenades extending in 
all directions through this maze of greenery and color. There are over three 
miles of them in the forty acres of the Horticultural grounds. It is a perfect 
dream of Summer ! 

The interior of Horticultural Hall is to the exterior what the attar of roses 
is to roses, — the quintessence of all sweetness. The finest flower-language we 
have — that of Shakespeare in the mouth of Perdita, in the "Winter's Tale," and 
that of Milton, in " Lyciclas " — suggests itself, and makes us feel how weak it is 
in the midst of these blooms and splendors. If we saw a dream of Summer 
without, we see Summer herself here in all her opulence. We see more, for, 
magnificent as the floral display is, we cannot keep our eyes from the walls 
which enclose it, and are finer than any we have yet beheld. They are glorious 
in the Moorish beauty of their reds and whites, — an apparent tile-work of 
squares, relieved by arches and rosettes, from the floor to the ceiling. We have 
waters, also, as we had without, — in the centre of this great conservatory Miss 
Foley's marble fountain, and the eight lesser fountains which adorn its sides, 
younger sisters of that shining Naiad. If we are not learned in botany, we 
have the sense of seeing, and the sense of smelling — an innate botany, which is 
dellcrhted now. We have also the sense of colors and forms. Who can sum 



THE CENTENNIAL. 




BRITISH AND NEW YORK BUILDINGS. 



up the riches of this great treasure-house of Nature, — the curious and costly 
flowers and plants and shrubs; the shapes of the stems and boughs and leaves; 
the hues and tints of their buds and fruitage ; their tropical lights and shadows ; 
their far-off gorgeousness of bloom and verdancy ; the great palms, the litde 
blossoms, the yellow-red oranges, the yellow-white lemons, the roses, the lilies, — 
the inexhaustible resources which Nature is lavishly spending and receiving? 
She imposes her extravagance upon us, and as we hate to be extravagant we 
will ascend to the galleries, and taking a downward glance thence at this vision 
of Flora and Pomona, we will go out on the promenade, and resume our 
wonted composure with the sight of the grounds, which are to remain as they 
are, a permanent glory of Fairmount. 

A few steps down Fountain avenue brings us to Agricultural avenue, which 
leads us past the New England Kitchen, and across the litde stream that goes 
sparkling down Belmont valley, till we approach Agricultural Hall. It is an 
odd-looking structure, it must be confessed, — a combination of the fronts of 
squat cathedrals, flanked by towers with bulging copes and crosses, the gabled 
ends of interjected aisles, pointed arch windows, and what not beside that is 



354 



A CENTURY AFTER. 



bizarre and Gothic. Architecturally speaking, it consists of a long nave crossed 
by three transepts, both the nave and transepts being composed of Howe truss 
arches. It is the third in point of size of the Centennial Buildings, covering an 
area of over ten acres, which is about half that of the Main Buildine. There is 
no room lost in it, though you would not think so as you approach it, for the 
spaces enclosed between the nave and the transepts, and the four spaces at the 







SWEDISH SCHOOL-HOUSE. 



corners of the structure, are roofed, and occupied by agricultural exhibitors. 
The simple word "agriculture" has a vaster and more varied meaning here 
than is given in any of the dictionaries The old word-makers never saw 
anything like what is before us, and like what neighbors us ; for forest products 
are here, as well as the tillage of the fields, the garden with its fruits, and 
distant lands with their pomology, marine animals and fish culture, animal and 
vegetable products, textile substances of animal and vegetable origin, not 
forgetting the dunib creatures, as we call them, who have a little enclosure of 



THE CE N TE NNIA L . 



355 



twenty-two acres just outside, — horses, mules, and asses, horned cattle, sheep, 
swine, goats, and dogs (dogs dumb!), and all varieties of fowl and poultry, — a 
kingdom of obstreperous subjects, who neigh and bray and low and bleat and 
squeal and bark and crow and scream and cackle (dumb animals, quotha!): 
live stock, machinery, engineering, — the world of activity and industr}' represented 
in the word "agriculture." We must enlarge our dictionaries, or create a new 
speech. We are reminded of the Main Building by the pavilions and houses 
which are scattered about us. Yonder, for example, \ve see the pavilion of 
Brazil enclosed in a bright painted railing, and yonder the tall archway-portal 




JAPANESE DWELLING. 



of Spain. There are over twenty nations here, thirteen of the powers of 
Europe, — all Europe, we may say, — China and Japan, three South American 
republics and one empire, Mexico, Canada, and a deputation of our own States. 
We occupy at least two-thirds of the space, showing more largely, perhaps, 
than anywhere else in the Centennial Grounds, in the shape of special exhibits 
contributed by the State Agricultural Boards of New England and the West. 
To describe all these products and implements, this world of tillage and 
husbandry, demands more bucolic knowledge than any one? ot us possesses, 
whatever he may pretend, and the man who can do rt, if he exists, must be 



A CEN7URY AFTER. 




NEW JERSEY BUILDING AND WOMEN S PAVILION. 



a formidable compound of directories and encyclopedias. Who is this greater 
Virgil? 

We ramble down Agricultural avenue to Fountain avenue, and down the 
last until we stand in front of the United States Government Building. It is 
noticeable for its simplicity, — a business-like structure, with two short transepts, 
slanting roof, and a massive dome and cupola. The national flags are flying, — 
east, west, north, and south, and high over all on the dome. The Government 
is present in this edifice and in the two lesser houses north of it, — present in 
its might and its knowledge. The War Department is here with its display of 
weapons, from old wall-pieces, such as our forefathers hunted and fought with, 
to the huge cannon of to-day, — muskets, rifles, field-pieces, howitzers, swords, 
sabres, bayonets, and musket-making and cartridge-making machinery; the Navy 
Department, with its marine enginery and marine ordnance ready for action, 
and its trophies of adventure in Arctic seas, — a boat that was used by Dr. Kane 
and one that belonged to Sir John Franklin; the Post Office Department, with 
its model post and money-order ofifices and its corps of carriers, — industrious 
men of letters; the Treasury Department, with specimens of its moneys, paper 



THE CE N TE NNIA L. 




CONNECTICUT, NEW HAMPSHIRE, AND MASSACHUSETTS BUILDINGS. 



currency and fractional cur- 
rency, and coinages of gold, 
silver, nickel, and copper; die 
State Department, with rare 
and valuable papers; the Patent 
Office, with its numberless plans and models, and last, the institudon which takes 
its name from an eminent man of science, who came into the world with a ducal 
bar sinister in his escutcheon, — James Smithson. The Smithsonian Institudon fills 
nearly one-half of the building with its archsological, ethnological, geological, and 
mineraloeical collections and curiosides. One must be a savant to remember 
the different "ologies" that the Smithsonian is hatching into science. War in 
his highest capacides and Peace in her highest intellectuality are side by side, 
victorious and triumphant. The larger of the lesser buildings, which we see as 
we stroll up Belmont avenue, is the United States Hospital, occupied by the 
Army Medical Bureau; the other, between it and the Government Building, is 
the United States Laboratory, and the canvas there on State avenue is the 
United States Hospital Tent. 

As we may be said to have done with the General Government, we are 
free to visit the houses of the States and nations scattered on and back of 
State avenue. We will begin with .some of our visitors, say England, who 



A CENTURY AFTER. 



7' ji.V'^-' 







OHIO, INDIANA, AND ILLINOIS BUILDINGS. 



has erected a group of three buildings, which takes 

IS back to the days of Shakespeare and EHzabeth, 

and are beautiful examples of plain Gothic-cottage 

architecture. It is like looking upon a picture to see 

them standing within their rustic fences, their 

ends facing us, with peaked roofs, projecting windows, 

and gabled windows and porch; alike, but no two just 

alike in their interlacement of squares and slopement of angles and total 

arcliitectural effect. 

The most characteristic structure hereabout is the little cottage of Japan. 
It transports us into the very heart of that strange island-empire, whence its 
materials were brought over thousands of miles of sea, and the ingenious 
craftsmen, who handled them so defdy, shivering in the sharp air of our winter, 
working by eye-measurements and without nails. Our carpenters have ceased 
to smile at their odd fashion of working and their simple skill. Pursuing our 
way from State avenue to Belmont drive, we come upon the State buildings of 
Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire. They are picturesque enough 
in a homely way, — gabled, porched, shingled, in what we take to be a Gothic- 
cottage style. If we had to make a choice out of the three we should select 
the pretty tittle house of Connecticut. From these we proceed to the State 



THE CENTENNIAL. 




PENNSYLVANIA BL'ILDING. 



buildings of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. They are, we suppose, fair examples 
of Western architecture; at any rate they are curious ones. There is something- 
effective in the color of the Ohio building, in the green stone and the variegated 
marble, and the front of the Indiana building is slighdy suggestive of the stern 
of a double-deck river steamboat. A short stroll down Belmont avenue and we 
come to the unique building of -New Jersey. It is a house of many gables 
and porches, built of cross-beams of timber, the first story filled in with light 
paneling, all the rest being covered with bright red tiles. What with its 
verandas, balconies, gables, and dormer windows, its square tower and its red 
tiling, it is the best piece of color in the whole Centennial Grounds. In the large 
building just below — the Women's Pavilion, a Maltese cross, with a handsome 
dome in the centre — the women of America have done themselves great honor. 
It was projected by them, was built with their money, and is filled with their 
pretty industries and winsome arts. If we had wine here our toast would be, 
"Woman, God bless her!" Strolling down Agricultural avenue, past the Brazilian 
building, (best respects to Dom Pedro.) we have reached the Swedish School-house. 
It is the most unpretentious building here, and one of the prettiest, witii its 



360 



A CENTURY AFTER. 



native woods shining in their polish, not a nail in sight, and no attempt at 
ornamentation in its simple peaked roof and its plain arched windows. Rambling- 
down Agricultural avenue and along the Avenue of the Republic, we come to 
the Pennsylvania building. Let us enter its doors and rest and meditate. 

One hundred years ago the colonies assembled in Independence Hall and 
declared that their allegiance to the mother country was ended. They were 
weak and she was strong; their only strength was in the extent of their 
territories, which was her weakness, and in the undaunted spirit of her sons, 
which was her defeat. They won their independence, the world looking on and 
minding its own business. The colonies became States, and were attacked again 
by land and sea. They conquered and prospered and grew great. To-day their 
dominion extends across the whole breadth of the Continent, from ocean to 
ocean. There is more in that simple statement than in any eloquent flight of 
language. One hundred years ago the State of Pennsylvania was sparsely 
settled; its immense wealth of iron and coal was unknown; its rivers were 
unnavigated; the population of Philadelphia was about twenty thousand. What 
the State is now we have seen in our journeying through it, and what the city, 
which has now a population of about eight hundred and twenty thousand. The 
tree that was planted by our forefathers, defended by their bayonets and watered 
by their blood, has shot up its sturdy stem, and is budding here, with the nations 
and the peoples of the earth around it. It was glorious in the seed; it is more 
glorious as we see it now, full-flowered, A CENTURY AFTER. 




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